
Class _„?'^_3_i 

Book > Z^&i^ 



H 



OSPITAL 



T 



RANSPORTS. 



A MEMOIR 

of the 

Embarkation of the Sick and Wounded 

FROM THE Peninsula of Virginia 

IN THE Summer of 

1862. 



Compiled and Published at the reqtiest of the 
Sanitary Commission, 




Boston : 

TICKNOR AND FIELDS. 
1863. 



Ctf^^ 2 — 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by 

TICKNOR AND FIELDS, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massa- 
chusetts. 



University Press: 

Welch, Bigelow, and Company, 

Cambridge. 



i^ 



b" 



DEDICA TION, 



To THE Memories of 

J. M. GRYMES, M. D., 
sometime Surgeon in charge of the Hospital Transport 
Daniel Webste7\ and, at the time of his death, Surgeon to 
the temporary Home for disabled soldiers, of the Sanitaiy 
Commission at Washington ; ■ — 

WILLIAM PLATT, Junior, Esq., 

late a Relief Agent of the Sanitary Commission, who 
died from the effect of prolonged exposure and excessive 
exertion in pushing succor to the wounded during and 
after the battles of South Mountain, Crampton's Gap, and 
Antietam ; — 

Lieut. -Col. JOSEPH BRIDGHAM CURTIS, U.S.V., 

formerly of the Engineer Corps of the Central Park of 
New York, afterwards of the central staff of the Sani- 
tary Commission, who fell while leading his regiment to 
the assault of the rebel works at Fredericksburg, De- 
cember, 1862; — 

RUDD C. HOPKINS, M. D., 

formerly Superintendent of the Lunatic Asylum of Ohio, 
lately a General Inspector of the Sanitary Commission, 



iv Dedication. 

and who died in its service, while on the river passage 
from Memphis to Cincinnati ; — 

MRS. FANNY SWAN WARRINER, 
who bore heroically to the end a woman's part in war, hav- 
ing died at Louisville, Kentucky, on her way home from 
the Head-quarters Relief Station of the Sanitary Com- 
mission with the Army of the Tennessee, — of disease 
there contracted; — 

DAVID BOS WELL REID, M. D., 
Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; Fellow of 
the Royal College of Physicians of London ; Member of 
the Medico-Chirurgical Society of St. Petersburg; for- 
merly Director of Ventilation at the Houses of Parlia- 
ment of Great Britain ; late Professor of Physiology and 
Hygiene at the University of Wisconsin ; at the time of 
his death. Special Inspector of the Ventilation of Hospi- 
tals of- the Sanitary Commission; — and 

Surgeon ROBERT WARE, U. S. V., 

for several years physician in charge of the largest Dis- 
pensary District in Boston, afterwards a General In- 
spector of the Sanitary Commission, and Surgeon of its 
Relief Stations at Yorktown, White House, and Berkeley, 
lastly Surgeon of Volunteers, He fell at his post in the 
works at Washington, North Carolina, during its bom- 
bardment by the rebels, March, 1863. 



I 



NTRODUCTION. 



'^ I ^HE Sanitary Commission, grateful for 
JL the generous confidence reposed in it 
by the public, would be glad to meet and 
justify that confidence by a circumstantial 
account of its operations in field and hos- 
pital, from the first day of its existence to 
the present. It might, perhaps, without 
undue boasting, show such a picture of 
what has been accomplished as would 
stimulate, to the last degree, the interest 
and the liberality of loyal hearts, if this 
v/ere required. But the immense mass of 
details which such an account must in- 
volve, would prove nearly as laborious in 
the reading as in the performance, over- 
whelming rather than enlightening all who 
have not been personally engaged in the 
work. The intense interest which the ser- 



vi Introduction. 

vice inspires in those devoted to it, lightens 
what might, under other circumstances, 
seem wearisome duties ; but a minute de- 
scription of the ceaseless round of con- 
sultations, examinations, correspondence, 
journeys, accounts, distributions, required 
of the Commission as trustee of the public 
bounty, could not be expected to prove 
interesting to others. 

The most that the Commission can at 
present be called upon to offer, or the pub- 
lic be likely to accept, is such brief ac- 
counts of single sections in the various 
departments of its labor, as may indicate 
the general method and spirit extending 
through the whole. In accordance with 
this plan, from time to time, the Commis- 
sion has published reports covering a sin- 
gle battle-field, or a term of one round of 
visits to the hospitals, or the results of 
its arrangements for the care of disabled 
and discharged soldiers for a stated period. 
There is one branch of the service, hoAV- 
ever, which has as yet had no such public 
record, -— that of the Hospital Transports. 
In order to supply this omission in some 



Introduction. vii 

measure, the Commission has caused to be 
placed in the hands of a manager of the 
"Woman's Central Army Relief Associa- 
tion of New York," a quantity of letters 
and other papers, containing observations 
made at the time, and on the spot, by those 
in its service who assisted in the embarka- 
tion and care of the sick and wounded 
on the peninsula of Virginia in 1862. Pas- 
sages from these have been selected and 
arranged with a view to give within mode- 
rate compass as many particulars as may 
be necessary to show the scope of the en- 
terprise, and the position which it held as 
an aid to the government, together with 
the difficulties and the success, the disap- 
pointments and satisfactions, with which it 
was attended. The plan is limited to the 
Atlantic hospital transports, and to the 
period of embarkation of the patients upon 
them, for the sake of compactness and 
completeness in the grouping of incidents. 
A similar service in the Western rivers the 
same year was larger in its scope, and in 
some of its arrangements more satisfactory, 
but it was at the same time less homoge- 
neous in character. 



viii Introduction. 

For the style of the letters quoted, this 
only need be said : they were, for the most 
part, addressed to intimate friends, with 
no thought that they could ever go beyond 
them, or, as in the case of those addressed 
by the Secretary to the President of the 
Commission, were in the nature of familiar 
and confidential reports ; nearly all were 
written hastily, in some chance interrup- 
tion to severe labor, — often with a pencil, 
while passing in a boat from one vessel to 
another. Passages may be found which 
are not merely descriptive of the Hospital 
Transport service, but they contain thoughts 
springing from the occasion, and which will 
serve to fasten pictures of scenes and cir- 
cumstances with which that service was 
associated, and which are now historical.* 

It should be understood that the ac- 

* The letters were all written by two officers of the 
Commission and six ladies serving with them. As the 
different writers are quoted from in succession, and the 
same occurrences are often described from more than one 
point of view, a capital letter at the head of a paragraph 
will indicate the change from one writer to another. The 
officers will be known by the letters A. and B. ; the ladies, 
by the letters M. and N. 



Introduction, ix 

count is not intended to be complete in 
any respect, and that no attempt has been 
made to give pubhc credit to individuals 
for their services, whatever these may have 
been. It is known that to do so in some 
cases where public gratitude is most de- 
served would give pain ; to do so in all 
cases would greatly swell the bulk of the 
volume. In general terms only it may be 
said, that among the surgeons who freely 
gave their aid in the enterprise were num- 
bered some of the leading members of the 
profession, — among those who served as 
administrative officers, matrons, and nurses, 
the most honored historical families of 
New England, New York, New Jersey, 
and Pennsylvania were represented. The 
class termed Ward-masters was mainly 
composed of medical students of two 
years, with some young men of Philadel- 
phia who had had previous experience in 
caring for sick soldiers in the noble local 
charities of that city. It included, also, 
some students of theology. The responsi- 
bility for the detail of care of the patients 
was chiefly with this class, and the devot- 



X Introduction. 

edness, pliability, and practical talent with 
which they generally met this responsi- 
bility was too remarkable to be passed 
without at least this simple reference to it 
as one of a class of facts of the war. 

It is a secondary object of the recital to 
make evident, from narrations of actual ex- 
perience, what is sometimes required for 
supplying the unavoidable deficiencies of 
government service in emergencies. Not to 
have sprung at once into a thorough prac- 
tical knowledge of what the dread contin- 
gencies of war require, is no just cause 
of reproach to a peaceful people like our- 
selves, who, meaning peace, sought only to 
" ensue it " ; but not to thoroughly learn 
our duty under such an experience as we 
are passing through, would indeed bring 
shame upon our name. 

It is no common nation's task that we 
have undertaken, and only craven souls 
will lose heart in finding that it cannot be 
light or short in the sacrifices which it de- 
mands of us. True and far-seeing lovers 
of their country, as they regard the suff*er- 
ings of those uncomplaining men who 



Iiitroditction, xi 

fought for us in the Peninsula, — men who, 
though perhaps but green soldiers in the 
field, proved, one and all, heroes upon the 
bed of pain and in the hour of death, will 
be led to the reflection, "This is what it 
costs a republic to have nursed rebellion 
tenderly at its breast." We know that the 
barbarous spirit with which the chances 
of war first were dared in this gambling 
scheme of reckless ambition, will prolong 
it, when resistance to the law can no 
longer avail for anything but the gratifica- 
tion of the personal vindictive hate of the 
disappointed conspirators. And we know 
that if we do well the work the pecuniary 
cost of which we are throwing so heavily 
upon our posterity, this will be the last of 
such schemes. The more we feel its cost 
ourselves, the more resolute shall we be 
that, when done, this work shall have been 
done once for all. The more ready shall 
we be to meet whatever sacrifice it may 
ryet require of us ; the more ready to truly 
say, " Our loyalty is without conditions ; 
success at this point or that, this year or 
next, we do not ask ; we have elected our 



xii Introductioit. 

leaders, and we accept what they have the 
abihty to give us. It is enough that in 
this nation, standing firmly upon its decla- 
ration of equal rights to all, no gleam of 
peace can ever be seen to fall upon a rebel 
in arms." 

The deepest solicitude that all unneces- 
sary suffering should be avoided in carry- 
ing on the war, is not in the least degree 
inconsistent with this sentiment, provided 
only it be guided and constrained by a 
true appreciation of the duties and the 
necessities of war. On the contrary, patri- 
otism and humanity have one origin, and 
each strengthens the other in every heart. 
Whatever, then, leads the public to truly 
comprehend what the rebellion costs, and 
at the same time inculcates a right spirit 
of humane provision against the unneces- 
sary suffering of war, must foster a sound 
and healthy public sentiment. 

Such, it is hoped, may be the influence 
of this little volume, to the introduction of 
which only this further explanation will be 
required by the reader. 

A sudden transfer of the scene of active 



Introduction. xili 

war from the high banks of the Potomac 
to a low and swampy region, intersected 
with a net-work of rivers and creeks, early 
in the summer of 1862, required appli- 
ances for the proper care of the sick and 
wounded which did not appear to have 
been contemplated in the government ar- 
rangements. Seeing this, with the approv- 
al of the Medical Bureau, a proposal was 
made to the Quartermaster-General to 
allow the Sanitary Commission to take in 
hand some of the transport steamboats of 
his department, of which a large number 
were at that time lying idle, to fit them up 
and furnish them in all respects suitably 
for the reception and care of sick and 
wounded men, providing surgeons ' and 
other necessary attendance, without cost 
to government. After tedious delays and 
disappointments of various kinds, — one 
fine large boat having been assigned, par- 
tially furnished by the Commission, and 
then withdrawn, — an order was at length 
received, authorizing the Commission to 
take possession of any of the government 
transports, not in actual use, which might 
be at that time lying at Alexandria. 



xiv Introduction. 

The only vessel then lying at Alexan- 
dria stanch enough for the ocean passage 
from Virginia to New York or Boston, 
proved to be the Daniel Webster, an old 
Pacific Coast steamer of small capacity. 
She had been recently used for transport- 
ing troops, and had been "stripped of ev- 
erything movable but dirt," — so that the 
labor of adapting her to the purpose in 
view was not a light one. 

This vessel was assigned to the Commis- 
sion on the 25th of April. Provisional en- 
gagements had previously been made, in 
New York and Philadelphia, with the per- 
sons afterwards employed as her hospital 
company. These were telegraphed for, the 
moment the order was received, and the 
refitting of the ship commenced, — at which 
point we turn to the narratives of those 
engaged in the work. 



Hospital Transports. 



Hospital Transports. 



CHAPTER I. 

/ 4 \ Hospital Transport Daniel Wehsier^ 
^ ' Cheeseman's Creek, April 30, 1862. 

I RECEIVED General Meigs's order under which 
this ship came into our hands on Friday. She 
was then at Alexandria, and could not be got 
over the shoals to Washington. It was not till 
near night that I was able to get a lighter, and 
this, after one trip, was taken off to carry rein- 
forcements to McDowell at Fredericksburg. I 
succeeded before daylight of Saturday in getting 
a tug at work, and by the next morning, Sun- 
day, had her hold full. At eleven o'clock got 
the hospital company on board, but the com- 
missaries failed in their engagements, and at last 
I had to send off a foraging-party at Alexandria 
for beef. Finally at four o'clock, D., who had 
gone after E., and E., who had gone after beef, 
arrived simultaneously from different directions. 
With E. came the beef, and we at once got 
under way. 



1 8 Hospital Transports. 

We had six medical students, twenty men 
nurses (volunteers all), four surgeons, four la- 
dies, a dozen contrabands (field hands), three 
carpenters, and half a dozen miscellaneous pas- 
sengers. There were, besides, five of us mem- 
bers of the Sanitary Commission and of the 
central staff, with one of the Philadelphia asso- 
ciates, eight military officers, ninety soldiers 
(convalescents, returning to their regiments), 
some quartermaster's mechanics, and a short 
ship's crew and officers. The ship has a house 
aft, with state-rooms for thirty, and an old- 
fashioned packet-saloon below, ^vith state-rooms 
opening out of it; and all fonvard of the en- 
gine-rooms, a big steerage, or "'tween decks,'^ 
which had been fitted with shelves, some of 
them fifteen feet deep, in which the soldiers 
had been carried to the Peninsula, packed in 
layers. 

I organized all our Commission people at 
sunset on Sunday, in two watches, sea-fashion ; 
appointed watch-officers, and have worked since, 
night and day, refitting ship. We broke up all 
the transport arrangements, — they were in a 
filthy condition, — thoroughly scraped, washed, 
and scrubbed the whole ship from stem to stem, 
inside and out ; whitewashed the steerage ; 
knocked away the bulkheads of the wings of 



Hospital Transports, 19 

the engine-room section, so as to get a thorough 
draft from stem to stem ; then set to fitting and 
furnishing new bunks ; started a new house on 
deck, for^vard ; made and fitted an apothecary's 
shop ; and when we anived at Cheeseman's 
Creek were ready for patients. 

(M.) It was a bright day, the river peaceful 
and shining. Just as we started, the httle gun- 
boat Yankee passed up, bringing, all on a 
string, five rebel craft which she had just taken 
in the Rappahannock. Late in the afternoon 
we passed the " stone fleet," eight boats, all 
ready to sink in the channel, in case the Merri- 
mack should try to run up the Potomac. The 
rebels ha\ing taken up all the buoys, at dark we 
had to come to anchor. 

Sunday, the first day, was gone. As for us, 
we had spent it, sitting on deck, se^^'ing upon a 
hospital flag, fifteen by eight, and singing hymns 
to take the edge ofl" of this secular occupation. 
Just after we had anchored, a chaplain was discov- 
ered among the soldiers j and in half an hour we 
got together for service, and an ^^ unprepared " 
discourse upon charity, much like unprepared 
discourses in general. Quite another thing was 
the singing of the contrabands, who all came in 
and stood in a row so black, at the dark end 



20 Hospital Transports, 

of the cabin, that I could see neither eyes nor 
teeth. But they sung heartily, and everybody 
followed them. 



(A.) CheesemarHs Creek. — I went ashore to 
report our arrival to the Medical Director. On 
our way up the harbor, — a shallow river-mouth, 
with low, pine-covered banks, in which there are 
now about four hundred steamboats and small 
transport-craft, — I hailed the steamboat Dan- 
iel Webster No. 2, which carries the Regi- 
ment New York Volunteers, and let the Colonel 
know that his ^^dfe was among our nurses. This 
morning I received his acknowledgments in the 
form of a check for $ 1,000. for the Commission, 
accompanied by what was still better, a note of 
the most hearty and appreciative recognition of 
what the Commission had done for the relief of 
the soldiers. 

Picking our way among all the craft, and keep- 
ing out of the way of the tugs and tenders which 
were flying about, we landed on a large meadow 
where were a number of wall-tents, one labelled 
" Office of Quartermaster's Department " ; an- 
other, " Telegraph Office " ; another, " Post- 
Office " ; another, " Office of Land Transporta- 
tion " j another, " Harbor-Master," &c., &c. 
One contained a number of prisoners, brought 



Hospital Transports, 21 

in the day before, and, of course, well-guarded. 
Ordnance and forage barges lay along the shore, 
with a few big guns, and piles of shot and shell, 
just landed. The ground was crowded ; — or- 
derlies holding horses ; lounging, dirty soldiers j 
idlers and fatigue-parties at work in relays ; sen- 
tries ; Quartermaster's people, white and black ; 
and a hundred army wagons loading -v^ith forage 
and biscuit-boxes from the barges. I went at 
once to Colonel Ingalls, at the Quartermaster's 
office. He was kind, prompt, decisive \ horses 
were ordered for us, and we soon rode off through 
a swamp-forest, the air full of the roar of falling 
trees and the shouts of teamsters and working- 
parties of soldiers, the former trying to navigate 
their wagons, and the latter making corduroy 
roads for them. The original country roads had 
all been used up j it was difficult even to ford 
across them, when we had occasion to do so, on 
horseback. The army wagons, each dra^m by 
six mules, and with very light loads, were jerked 
about frightfully. We passed many -wTecks, and 
some horses which had sunk and been smoth- 
ered. Some wagons were loaded with gun-beds 
and heavy rope screens for embrasures ; and we 
saw eight or ten mortars, each on a truck by 
itself, and dra^^m by from sixteen to tvvent}'-four 
horses. At the first open ground we found cav- 



2 2 Hospital Transports. 

airy exercising ; then a cavalry camp, then a bit 
of wood, then rising dry ground, and our road 
ran through more camps. Then, coming in the 
midst of these camps, to the crest of a low swell, 
we opened suddenly a grand view of the valley 
of York River, a country something like the 
valley of the Raritan, at Eagleswood and oppo- 
site, but with less wood, more piny and more 
diversified, the river much broader, a mile and a 
half, perhaps, across. On the slope before us — 
nearly flat, with an inclination toward the river — 
was a space of several hundred acres, clear land, 
and a camp for some twenty to forty thousand 
men ; shelter-tents, and all alive. It was a 
magnificent scene, the camp and all beyond, as 
we came upon it suddenly — right into it, at full 
gallop. The military " effect " was heightened 
now and then by a crashing report of artillery. 

In the midst of the camp we came upon a 
long rack, — a pole on crotched sticks, — at 
which were fastened a score or more of horses. 
" We must stop here," said Dr. C. " They don't 
let you ride in." And that was all to show that 
we had reached Head-quarters. 

It was an aristocratic quarter of the town, 
when you came to look at the clean tents and 
turf, but there were no flags or signs to distin- 
guish it. We walked to the tent of the Medical 



Hospital Transports. 23 

Director, and just then there came another of 
those crashing reports. " They have been keep- 
ing that up all night/' said the Doctor. " That 
is n't the enemy % " " Yes." " Is he so near % " 
" O yes ! we are quite within range here." 

The medical arrangements seem to be de- 
plorably insufficient. The Commission is at this 
time actually distributing daily of hospital sup- 
pHes much more than the government.* 

(B.) May 1st. No patients on board yet; 
ship getting a final polish. Got up early and 
found the Elizabeth coming alongside for 
stores. The Commission has here at present, 
besides the Daniel Webster^ one or two store- 
ships, and the Wilson Small, a boat of light 
draught, fitted up as a little hospital, to run up 
creeks and bring down sick and wounded to the 
transports. She is under the care of Dr. C, 
and has her little supply of hospital clothing, 
beds, food, &c., always ready for chance ser- 
vice. There is also a well-suppUed storehouse 
ashore. 

In sight are the abandoned rebel quarters at 
Shipping Point, now used as hospitals by one of 
our divisions ; a number of log-huts finely built, 
but on low and filthy ground, surrounded by 

* See Appendix A. 



24 Hospital Transports. 

earthworks, which are rained on half the time 
and fiercely shone on the other half, and from 
which are exhaling deadly vapors all the time, 
a death-place for scores of our men who are 
piled in there, covered with vermin, dying with 
their uniforms on and collars up, — dying of 

fever 

I attended this afternoon to the systematic 
arrangement of the commissariat stores down 
aft, sent a telegram for more supplies to Bal- 
timore, arranged for sto\ving the contrabands 
and putting bunks in the new deck-ward, and 
then put two ladies and a nice supply of or- 
anges, tea, lemons, wine, &c., &c. on a small 

boat, and started them with to Ship Point 

Hospital, where four poor fellows died last 
night. Of course there is that vitally important 
medical etiquette to observe, here as elsewhere, 
and we must approach carefully, when we would 
not frustrate our o\^m plans ; — and so it is. 

^^ , suppose you go ashore and ask whether 

it will be agreeable to have the ladies come over 
and visit the hospital, — just to walk through and 
talk mth the men." So the ladies have gone " to 
talk with the men," mth spirit-lamps, and farina, 
and lemons, and brandy, and clean clothes, and 
expect to have an improving conversation. After 
the party was off, sent orders to Fort Monroe 



Hospital Transports. 25 

for special supplies ; received Dr. Tripler, who 
dined with us ; furnished ^nne, tea, bread, to a 
surgeon who had been told that the Commis- 
sion's flag was fl}ing here, and had come seven 
miles across the swamps, and rowed out to us 
in a small boat to try for these things. 

(M.) By dark the Wilson Small came along- 
side with our first patients, thirty-five in number, 
who were carefully lifted on board and STvomg 
through the hatches on their stretchers. In half 
an hour they had all been tea'd and coffeed and 
refreshed by the nurses, and shortly after were all 
undressed and put to bed clean and comfortable, 
and in a droll state of grateful wonder ; the bad 
cases of fever furnished with sponges and co- 
logne-water for bathing, and ydnt and water or 
brandy-toddy for drinking, and a man to watch 
them, and ward-masters up and do^\TL the wards, 
and a young doctor in the apothecar^^'s shop, 
and to-day (May 3d) they are all better 

Meantime additional supplies arrived from 
Washington, Baltimore, and Fortress Monroe, 
and a surgeon and nurses of our company were 
busy daily on shore at the Ship Point Hospital, 
dispensing stores, and doing what they could for 
the poor fellows there, who seemed to us in 
want of everything One hundred and 



26 Hospital Transports. 

ninety patients have now come on board ; eigh- 
teen miles some of them say they have been 
brought in the ambulances (large statement of 
exhausted fellows jolted over corduroy roads). 

AVe ladies arrange our days into three 

watches, and then a promiscuous one for any 
of us, as the night work may demand, after eight 
o'clock. Take Sunday, for instance. 

It was 's and 's watch from seven to 

twelve. So they were up and had hot breakfast 
ready in our pantry, which is amidships between 
the fonvard and aft wards ; ward-masters on the 
port and starboard sides for each ward, to watch 
the distribution of the food, and no promiscuous 
rushing about allowed ; the number for coffee 
and the number for tea marked in the ward diet- 
books under the head of Breakfast, and the 
number for house-diet, or for beef-tea and toddy, 
&c., marked also ; so that when the Hospital com- 
pany learns to count straight, — an achievement 
of some difficulty, apparently, — there will be no 
opportunity for confusion. After breakfast we 
all assembled in the forward or sickest ward, 
and Dr. G. read the simple prayers for those at 
sea and for the sick. Our whole company and 
all the patients were together. It was good to 
have the service then and there. Our poor sick 
fellows lay all about us in their beds and listened 



Hospital Transports. 27 

quietly. As the prayer for the dying was fin- 
ished, a soldier close by the Doctor had ended 
his strife. 

After t^velve, our watch came on, and till four 
we gave out clean clothes, handkerchiefs, cologne, 
clothes to the nurses, and served the dinner, con- 
sulting the diet-books again. The house-diet, 
which was all distributed from our pantry, was 
nice thick soup and rice-pudding, and we made, 
over our spirit-lamps, the beef-tea and gruels for 
special cases. So with little cares came four 
o'clock, and with it clean hands and our own 
dinner \ after which the other t^vo ladies came 
on for the last watch, which included tea. Then 
there was beef-tea and punch to be made for 
use during the night ; and so the day for us 
ended with our sitting in the pantry and talking 
over evils to be remedied, and should the soiled 
clothes be sewed up in canvas-bags and trailed 
behind the ship, or hung at the stem, or headed 
up in barrels and steam-washed when the ship 
got in % We crawled up into our bunks that 
night amid a tremendous firing of big guns, and 
woke up in the morning to the announcement 
that Yorktown was evacuated. 

(M.) While we were Ipng anchored off Ship 
Point, do^^^l in the Gulf, New Orleans had 



28 Hospital Transports. 

surrendered quietly, and round the comer from 
us Fort Macon had been taken. "What was it 
all to us, so long as the beef-tea was ready at the 
right moment % 



CHAPTER II. 

(A.) May ^th. On Sunday the Ocean Queen, 
coming up from Old Pointy grounded about 
five miles off the harbor, and I went do^vn 
and put a few beds and men on board to 
assume a footing. She had been brought to 
Old Point with the intention of using her to 
amuse the Merrimack, and had therefore been 
stripped of everything not necessary to the sub- 
sistence of the small crew. 

(M.) On the way back, at eight in the even- 
ing, found that a great part of the army fleet, 
three hundred or more steamboats full of life, 
all before scattered for miles about the harbor, 
had been collected in close order and steam 
up. A number of hea\y steamers swept past 
also, each with a tow a quarter of a mile long, 
making on the dark evening a long line of light 
and Hfe. It was strange to see these floating 
cities melt away; the colored lights from the 
rigging going out one by one, and the bands 
and bugle-calls gro\ving faint and far. 



30 Hospital Transports. 

(A.) I had sent the Webster to sea, and with 

Mrs. and sister, B., and some two or three 

others, started in the Small to go to the tele- 
graph and mail, and to bury the body of a 
patient who had died in the night. It was 
raining hard. When we reached the shore 
there was no post-office, no telegraph, — noth- 
ing of the military station left, except some 
wagons and transports. Our storehouse was a 
mile back. I left a portion of our party to move 
the goods from it on board the barge, and started 
in the Small for Yorktown, to which I presumed 
Head-quarters would have been moved. On get- 
ting out of the harbor, we saw that the Queen 
was under way. It turned out that she had 
been ordered to Yorktown by the Harbor-Mas- 
ter. As she was lying-to, to sound the channel, 
we came up with her, and I went on board, after 
which — the Small going ahead to feel the way 
— we had a magnificent sail to Yorktown, the 
river so full of vessels that it was like getting up 
the Thames, only the lead was constantly going, 
" By the mark, five ! A quarter less six ! " and 
so on. Noble river ! and a noble ship ! Ahead, 
above all the fleet of three hundred transports, 
there were a dozen men-of-war. With our hos- 
pital flag at the fore, we slowly but boldly passed 
through the squadron, and came to anchor, the 



Hospital Transports. 31 

biggest ship of all, in the advance, — only one 
gunboat, as a picket-guard, being above us. I 
went ashore with the Captain and the young 
men, but could find no telegraph, and no officer 
of- the general staff; and as many men had been 
killed and wounded by the torpedo-traps, — in- 
fernal machines set by the rebels, — we were not 
allowed to enter the fortified lines of Yorktown. 
So, picking up a hospital cot and stretcher left 
by the enemy, I took boat again to return to 
the ship, leaving the Captain and others ashore. 
As I pulled out through the vessels at the wharf, 
I saw to my surprise two small "stern-wheel" 
steamboats coming alongside the Quee?t, one on 
each side. Hastening on board, I found that 
these boats were loaded with sick men, whom 
an officer in charge was about to throw off upon 
the Queen. They were the sick of regiments 
which had been ordered suddenly forward last 
night, and which were at this very moment en- 
gaged in the battle of Williamsburg; we could 
hear the roar of artillery. They had been sent 
during the night by ambulances to the shore of 
Wormley's Creek, where a large number had 
been left, the officer assured me, lying on the 
ground in the rain, without food or attendance. 
His orders were to take them upon the " stem- 
wheelers," as many as both would carry, find 



32 Hospital Transports. 

the Ocean Queen^ and put them upon her. I 
protested. The Quee?i at present was a mere 
hulk, without beds, bedding, or food even for 
her crew, and without a surgeon. It was obvi- 
ous that the men were, many of them, very ill. 
Some were, in fact, in a dying state. 

They were largely typhoid-fever patients ; and 
having been for twenty-four hours without 
nourishment, wet from exposure to the storm, 
and many of them racked by the motion of the 
ambulances over those frightful swamp cordu- 
roy roads (which I described the other day) into 
dehrium, I was sure that many would die if 
they long failed to receive most careful medi- 
cal treatment, with stimulants, nourishment, and 
warmth, no one of which could at that time be 
got for them on the Queen. The officer, how- 
ever, insisted. I determined to go ashore to 
look for a surgeon, or if possible to find Colonel 
Ingalls, the transport quartermaster, a gentle- 
man, and a most energetic and sagacious officer. 
I put the two ship's officers each at a gangway, 
with instructions to let no one come on board 
till I returned, and to use force, if necessary. I 
found a surgeon — a civilian — who was willing 
to help us, and pulled back, finding to my dis- 
gust, when I reached the ship, that the misera- 
ble first officer had given way, and every man 



Hospital Transports, 33 

who could walk of the patients had been taken 
on board. The glorious women had hunted out 
a barrel containing some Indian meal from some 
dark place where it had been lost sight of, in the 
depths of the ship, and were already ladling out 
hot gruel, which they had made of it ; and the 
poor, pale, emaciated, shivering wretches were 
lying anywhere, on the cabin floors, crying with 
sobbing, trembHng voices, " God bless you. 
Miss ! God bless you ! " as it was given to them 
from the ship's deck-buckets. I never saw such 
misery or such gratitude. My rebel stretcher 
came at once in play, and, after distributing 
forty dollars among the half-mutinous, super- 
stitious, beastly Portuguese crew and pantry 
servants, I got them at work bringing on the 
patients who were too feeble to be led on board. 
It was a slow and tedious process. By the bless- 
ing of God, before it was over, B., with Dr. 
Ware, — the two very best men I ever saw for 
such an emergency, — came wdth the Elizabeth 
from Cheeseman's Creek, and the Captain with 
the students from the shore. There were straw, 
bed-sacks and blankets, besides stimulants and 
medicines, on the Elizabeth^ and the Captain's 
authority soon added all the ship's force to 
the working party on her, filling beds and hoist- 
ing out bales of blankets. B. went on shore, 
3 



34 Hospital Transports. 

found a rebel cow at pasture, shot her, and 
brought off the beef, with another surgeon. By- 
ten o'clock at night, every sick man was in a 
warm bed, and had received medical treatment ; 
and beef-tea and milk-punch had been served 
to all who required it. But for three of them 
even the women could do nothing but pray, and 
close their eyes. 

At half past ten, I went aboard the Small, in- 
tending to run to Fortress Monroe for additional 
supplies. It was stormy and thick, and I could 
not induce the Captain to go out till daylight. 
We reached Old Point about nine, A. M. I got 
breakfast in the hotel, and then to Head-quarters. 
While in the telegraph-room, a message was 
received, which was whispered between the oper- 
ators ; a minute afterwards a gun was fired, and 
the long roll beat ; the infantry fell in on the 
parade, the artillery hurried to the ramparts and 
manned the heavy guns, and powder-carts were 
moving up the inclines. I asked, "What's all 
this 1 " " Telegram from Newport's News that 
the Merrimack is coming out ! " She did not 
come beyond Sewall's Point, however. 

The boat from Baltimore brought six excellent 
New York surgeons, twenty-six nurses, and ten 
surgical dressers (medical students). I got them 
all on the Small, and having succeeded in ob- 



Hospital Transports. 35 

taining the more important supplies in limited 
quantities, at noon left for Yorktown. On 
reaching here we found the " stem-wheelers " 
again alongside, and over three hundred pa- 
tients on board ; many very sick indeed, some 
delirious, some comatose, some fairly i7i articulo. 
The assistant surgeons, left behind at the aban- 
doned camps, are too anxious to be rid of 
them, so as to move with their regiments, and 
have surgery of war. And as their orders au- 
thorize it, they hurry them off to us in this style, 
after a day's ride in army wagons, without 
springs, over such a country without roads as I 
described last week. They were horribly filthy, 
and there was no time to clean them, often not 
to undress them, as, sick and fainting, they were 
lifted on board. 

About noon the next day I completed a hos- 
pital organization of such forces as I had, divid- 
ing the cabins and the upper steerage of the 
ship into five wards, for the bad cases, each 
ward having one surgeon, two ward-masters, 
and four nurses, — the tvvo latter classes in 
watches ; besides these, some assistant nurses 
and servants, convalescent soldiers, and contra- 
bands. In these wards only the very sick — 
chiefly cases of typhoid fever — were taken. 
By cutting away bulkheads, and getting wind- 



36 Hospital Transports, 

sails rigged, they were fairly well ventilated. I 
had to offer $ 200 for the repair of damages 
before this could be secured, however. All the 
rest of the ship was the sixth ward, in which 
the hernias, rheumatisms, bronchitises, lame and 
worn-out men were placed, organized in squads 
of fifty each, ^vith a squad-master to draw their 
rations of house-diet. 

To get proper food for all, decently cooked 
and distributed, has given me more concern 
than anything else. The ship servants are 
brutes, and our supply of utensils was cruelly 
short. Fortunately the Captain is a good-heart- 
ed and resolute man, and the ladies — God 
knows what we should have done without them ! 
— have contrived to make some chafing-dishes 
^^dth which the kitchen is pieced out wonder- 
fully. Just think of it for a moment. Here 
were one hundred miserably sick and dying 
men, forced upon us before we had been an 
hour on board ; and tug after tug swarming 
round the great ship, before we had a nail out 
of a box, and when there were but ten pounds of 
Indian meal and two spoons to feed them with. 
No account could do justice to the faithful in- 
dustry of the medical students and young men : 
how we all got through wdth it, I hardly know j 
but one idea is distinct, — that every man had a 



Hospital Transports. 37 

good place to sleep in, and something hot to 
eat daily, and that the sickest had every essen- 
tial that could have been given them in their 
0T\'n homes 

B. was all this time driving everything to 
obtain supplies, while the sick kept coming 
faster than we could get amthing ready for 
them. The last thing essential was more beef. 
B. at length got hold of a couple of draught 
cattle of Frankhn's division, left behind in their 
advance by steamboats, and w^hile these were 
being killed and dressed, we filled up to nine 
hundred patients. 

To avoid having more pushed on board, I 
had the Captain heave short ; so the moment 
that B.'s boat came, and the beef could be 
hoisted up, the steamer was under way, and 
before nighj:, no doubt, was well out to sea. 

I then went on board the Small to drop 
down, quite ill for the time from want of sleep 
and from fatigue. A few hours' rest and a quiet 
dinner brought me all right, however, and at 
sunset I set out with B. to look after the sick 
ashore. 



One of the strange effects, upon all concerned 
as workers on these hospital ships, in the heart 



38 Hospital Transports. 

of all misery and pain, and part of it, seems 
to have been the quieting of all excitement 
of feeling and of expression, — a sort of appar- 
ent stoicism granted for the occasion. A slight 
illustration of this quietness, which was char- 
acteristic of most of the hospital party, is given 
in the following passage from a letter of one 
of the ladies on the Ocean Queefz : — 

" It seems a strange thing that the sight of 
such misery, such death in life, should have 
been accepted by us all so quietly as it was. 
We were simply eyes and hands for those three 
days. Great, strong men were dying about us ; 
in nearly every ward some one was going. Yes- 
terday one of the students called me to go with 
him and say whether I had taken the name of 
a dead man in the forward cabin the day he 
came in. He was a strong, handsome fellow, 
raving mad when brought in, and lying now^, 
the day after, with pink cheeks and peaceful 
look. I had tried to get his name, and once he 
seemed to understand, and screeched out at the 
top of his voice, ' John H. Miller,' but whether 
it was his own name or that of some friend he 
wanted, I don't know ; we could not find out. 
All the record I had of him was from my diet- 
list : ' Miller, — forward cabin, port side, number 
119. Beef-tea and punch/ 



Hospital Transports, 39 

" Last night Dr. Ware came to me to know 
how much floor-room we had. The immense sa- 
loon of the aft cabin was filled ^nth mattresses 
so thickly placed that there was hardly stepping- 
room bet^veen them, and as I s^\Ting my lantern 
along the rows of pale faces, it showed me 
another strong man dead. N. had been work- 
ing hard over him, but it was useless. He 
opened his eyes when she called ^ Henry' 
clearly in his ear, and gave her a chance to pour 
brandy down his throat ; but all did no good ; 
he died quietly wMe she was helping some one 
else, and my lantern showed him gone. We 
are changed by all this contact ^^dth terror, else 
how could I deliberately turn my lantern on his 
face, and say to the doctor behind me, ' Is that 
man dead ? ' and then stand coolly while he 
examined him, listened, and pronounced him 
' dead.' I could not have quietly said a year 
ago, ' That will make one more bed, then, Doc- 
tor.' Sick men were waiting on deck in the cold, 
though, and ever)' few feet of cabin floor were 
precious. So they took the dead man out, and 
put him to sleep in his coffin on deck. We had 
to climb over another soldier Ipng up there 
quiet as he, to get at the blankets to keep the 
livino; warm." 



40 Hospital Transports. 

The business of feeding men by hundreds at 
short notice, in confined spaces, and with the aid 
of very Hmited cooking facihties, is one which can 
hardly be appreciated by those who have only 
heard, not seen, how it is accompHshed. It takes 
good heads as well as good hearts, strong will 
as well as strong limbs, to avoid ruinous confu- 
sion. After a battle, when men are brought in 
so rapidly that they have to be piled in almost 
without reference to their being human beings, 
and every one raving for drink first and then for 
nourishment, it requires strong nerves to be able 
to attend to them properly. Habit and system 
are the two great aids, — or rather system first of 
all, if possible ; though system in such cases grows 
out of experience. Happily system has ruled in 
the work of the Sanitary Commission, and such 
success as has attended its operations is chiefly 
due to this, as every one must have observed 
who had an opportunity to witness the difference 
between its doings and those having the same 
end in view, but carried on without well-studied 
or sufiiciently comprehensive plans. 

But in these Atlantic Floating Hospitals the 
difficulties were very great. The desideratum is 
a practicable diet, simple yet nourishing, abun- 
dant and not injurious ; always ready, yet varied 
enough to avoid the danger of satiety, which is 



Hospital Transports. 41 

ever threatening the sick man, whose chance 
of recovery may hang on his abihty to eat his 
food with rehsh. In this arduous part of the 
Hospital Transport duty, the ladies were able to 
be especially useful ; their sympathy and good 
judgment coming constantly in play, and the 
supply of fruits, jellies, and a variety of delica- 
cies being generally so liberal as to afford full . 
scope to their powers. But in dealing with 
hundreds and thousands of men, many of whom 
are not particularly in danger, but yet obliged to 
lie in beds for wounds to heal, it is necessary to 
provide on a scale so large as puts mere dehca- 
cies, or the ordinary resources of the sick-room, 
quite out of the question. It is utterly futile to 
attempt treating each one of four or five hundred 
patients as if we had him alone in a private 
family; and patients, as well as nurses and 
friends, must learn this after very little experi- 
ence. But it is practicable here, as elsewhere, 
to accomplish much that is beneficial and 
comfortable by judicious system firmly carried 
out. To avoid coUisions, and vain attempts to 
perform impossibilities, after a short experience, 
but careful study of what was really needed, 
rules were established which proved in practice 
nearly perfect in the matter of preventing delay 
and disappointment, while the result satisfied the 



42 Hospital Transports. 

patients in general quite as well as we can hope 
to satisfy sick men who have fitful appetites. 
As the suggestion may prove applicable to other 
cases, the established routine is given in full in 
the Appendix (B.) 



CHAPTER III. 

Just before the Ocea7i Qiieen left, a reinforce- 
ment of ladies and servants arrived from New 
York. A part of these were put on the Qiiee7i ; 
temporary quarters were found for the remainder 
on the Wilson S7?ialL Sick men were at this 
time being carted into Yorktown from the vari- 
ous abandoned camps in the vicinity, and the 
Sanitary party going on shore after the depart- 
ure of the Queen, these were found lying in tiers 
in the muddy streets, while tents were being 
pitched and houses cleared for their acconmao- 
dation. Several wagon-loads of hospital suppHes 
were sent to them from the store-boats of the 
Commission ; t^venty-five dollars were given to 
the surgeon in charge, to be used to stimulate 
the exertions of his limited force of attendants, 
and for the purchase of odds and ends, and he 
was informed that, if more should be required, 
it would be provided by the Commission, and 
then the company started on their little boat for 
West Point, where a battle was reported in pro- 
gress. 



44 Hospital Transports. 

(M. ) West Pointy May ()th, — We arrived here 
early this morning. The whole field of battle is 
open like a map before us. A white flag flies 
from a small house just below us. We are 
along-side a transport on which an officer was 
yesterday wounded by a shell thrown from a 
battery which had been concealed behind this 
house, upon which the same flag was then flying. 
Another transport near us has a shot-hole 
through her smoke-stack. There are three or 
four thousand men along the shore, and more 
constantly arriving and disembarking by the 
pontoons, with artillery and horses. As I write, 
a blue column is moving ofl", the bayonets 
glistening far into the woods. We are sending 
off small stores, called for by the Commission's 
Inspectors ashore, who are visiting the extempo- 
rized hospitals, and are also supplying some of 
the gunboats' sick-bays with fruits and ice. 

Just here a steamboat, loaded with sick and 
wounded, came along-side of us ; a transport, 
made use of as a hospital on the occasion, but 
needing almost everything. 

The more dangerously wounded upon this 
transport were transferred to the Small, and 
three ladies, with surgical dressers and servants, 
beef-tea, lemonade, ice, and stimulants, went to 
the assistance of the others, remaining with 



Hospital Transports. 45 

them till, after a transshipment at Yorktown, they 
were lodged in shore hospitals at Fortress Mon- 
roe. 

(A.) The Small received the dangerous 
cases, several of amputation among them ; the 
operations had been performed on the field. 
One died at midnight. I had great difficulty, at 
first, in our now very crowded little boat, in 
restraining individual zeal within the require- 
ments of order and tranquillity ; but I believe 
I succeeded, and as soon as the women began 
to experience the value of the discipline, they 
fell into it finely, and all behaved in the best 
manner possible. I put those on our boat in 
watches, rigidly excluding from that part of the 
boat where the wounded men were placed all 
who were not absolutely required on duty. The 
poor fellows were nearly all soon coaxed asleep, 
and the man who died passed away, and his 
body was removed without its being known to 
his nearest neighbor. We had on board Dr. 
Ware and two of the students, noble young 
fellows, zealous, orderly, and discreet. 

I think all the men who have any chance for 
recovery look better this morning. One man 
(amputation of thigh) who seemed nearly gone 
when he came on board, staring wildly, and 



4-6 Hospital Transports. 

muttering unintelligibly, lifted his hand toward 
me as I came into the cabin this morning ; and 
smiled when I bent over him. The nurse told 
me that he said to her on waking from a sound 
sleep, just at sunrise, " You have saved my life 
for my wife, good woman." There are several 
officers among them ; one a hero, who led his 
company against a regiment, pushing it back, 
but losing one fifth of his men, and getting a 
shot through the lungs. There is Corporal 

C , too, who has lost his leg, and who says 

he bears no malice against the man who shot 
him, but he hopes some day to meet and punish 
the wretch who kicked him on his wounded leg, 
after he was laid helpless. 

(M.) May nth. — Three of our wounded 
men died during the night. Everything was 
done for them ; they could not have had more 
care in their own homes. Our little boat is so 
crowded that the well sleep on the upper deck, 
all under cover being occupied by the wounded ; 
and, the small outfit of china, etc. being needed 
for the sick, we take our meat and potatoes on 
slices of bread for plates, and make the top of 
a stove our domestic board. 



Hospital Transports. 47 

As intelligence had come through telegraph 
from Washington that the Ocean Qiieen had 
been taken on her arrival at New York, against 
all remonstrance, for other purposes, the S, 
R, Spaulding^ a large, seaworthy vessel, though 
lamentably inferior for a hospital to the mag- 
nificent Ocean Queen, was obtained in her place. 
She was fitted for carrying cavalry, with stalls for 
horses, and at this time filled with stable odor, 
and needed coal and water as well as complete 
interior reconstruction. 

The Daniel Webster, arriving at Yorktown on 
her return from New York, could not get into the 
wharf-berth which had been secured for her near 
the hospital ; a tug was consequently procured, 
which being run alternately with the Small, 
between sunset and twelve o'clock at night, two 
hundred and forty sick and wounded were taken 
off and put comfortably to bed. After this her 
hospital service was reorganized so as to transfer 
from her all the force that could possibly be 
spared, and to put on her any of the company 
whom it was necessary to part with. An esti- 
mate was made of the stores requisite for her 
home trip, and at daylight what she could spare 
was put on board the Small, and she steamed 
off on her second trip to New York, eighteen 
hours after she arrived. Everything is noted as 



48 Hospital Transports. 

going on admirably in the loading of the Web- 
ster^ each man knowing his place, and not try- 
ing to do the duty of others. The discipline 
maintained by Dr. Gr^^mes was most satisfactory, 
and the corps of ladies and nurses work as if 
they had been doing this thing wisely and well 
all their lives.* 

At 9 A. M., the Webster started on her sec- 
ond trip, and there was time to look after the 
other vessels which were being fitted for the 
service. One company had been put at work 
on the Elm City, and another on the Knicker- 
bocker, both these river boats having been handed 
over by the Quartermasters Department to the 
Commission, to be fitted for hospital service. 
Stores had also been ordered to the State of 
Maine, a government hospital in need. All was 
found proceeding well with the limited force on 
the Elm City ; but the Knickerbocker, where was 
she? 

(M.) Steamboat K?iickerbocker, May 13//^. — 
If my letter smells of Yellow B, it has a right 

* Since the above was written, we have heard mth deep 
regret of the death of Dr. Grymes. Wherever he serv^ed, 
his labors were singularly ^vise and efficient ; \vith exceed- 
ing gentleness and quietness of manner he combined much 
energy of will, and to thorough skill was added a loving 
heart, and a rare devotedness of purpose. 



Hospital Transports, 49 

to, as my paper is the cover of the sugar-box. 
Since I last wrote, we have been jerking about 
from boat to boat, fitting up one, and starting 
her off, then doing the same by another. We 
came on board this boat Saturday night. She 
had then about two hundred wounded men on 
board, taken from the WilHamsburg fight, and 
bound for Fort Monroe, t^vo of the ladies and 
assistants to look after the sick during the few 
hours' run, and others to get things on hand, 
and fit up the wards. We had fifty-six Commis- 
sion beds made on the upper ward floor that 
night, and were ready to go on shore at Fort 
Monroe after the three and a half hours from 
Yorkto^vn. Dr. C. came on board and had 
all the men carefully removed to the Hygeia 
Hospital, and we improved the opportunity to 
get some roses from the garden for our wounded 
men left on the Small, and to see Mr. Lincoln 
driving past to take possession of Norfolk. We 
lay at the fort all night, and were blown awake 
the next morning by the explosion of the Mer- 
rimack, when I found to my amazement that 
along-side of us lay the Daniel Webster, No. 2, 
Government hospital, with four or five of our 
Commission company on board, whom we had 
left at Yorkto\vn. She ran, in passing, along-side 
our supply ships, (all our boats of the Sanitary 
4 



50 Hospital Transports. 

Commission are kno^vn by their flags,) just after 
we came away, and begged for help. Mr. A. 
tossed on board everything necessary, including 
two ladies, t^vo surgeons, and blankets, and 
started them off after us to the Fortress, ^vith 
two hundred badly wounded men. They had 
been wholly uncared for till our people got on 
board. They did all they could for them in so 
short a time, washed them, gave them good sup- 
pers and breakfasts, and Drs. W. and W. dressed 
the worst wounds, watching them all night as 
tenderly as women could. This boat was all the 
next day unloading her sick ; they were miser- 
ably wounded, and had to be lifted with great 
care. AVe on the K7iickerhocker started up the 

river again, and anchored off Yorktown 

We wanted a stove for our hospital kitchen on 
board, which has to be kept distinct from the 
kitchen of the ship's crew ; so we went ashore 

with to seize upon anything we could find ; 

poked about in all the rebel barracks, asked all 
the soldiers we met about it, and finally came 
upon the sutler's hut, — sutler of the Enfa7is 
Perdus^ who was cooking something nice for 
the officers' mess over a stove with four places 
for pots ! This was too much to stand, so un- 
der a written authority given to " Dr. Olmsted " 
by the Quartermaster of this department, we pro- 



Hospital Transports. 51 

ceeded to rake out the sutlers fire and lift his 
pots ofif j — and he offered us his cart and mule 
to drag the stove to the boat, and would take no 
pay ! So, through the \^Tetched to^^Ti, filled ^rith 
the debris of huts and camp furniture, old blan- 
kets, dirt}' cast-off clothing, smashed gun-car- 
riages^ exploded guns, vennin and filth every- 
where, — and along the sandy shore covered 
wdth cannon-balls, tossed into the river, and 
rolled back, — we followed the mule, a trium- 
phant procession, wa\ing our broken bits of 
stove-pipe and iron pot-covers. I left a polite 
message for the " Colonel perdu," — which had 
to stand him in place of his lost dinner, — and I 
shall never understand what was the matter with 
that sutler, whose self-sacrifice secured our three 
hundred men their meals promptly. 

The next morning the Kjiickerhocke?'^ to the 
surprise of the Commission, was not to be found. 
They searched the fleet t^^ice through for us, 
but in vain, and finally heard at the Quartermas- 
ter's ofhce, that a requisition had been received 
at midnight for a boat to go at once to the 
advance of the army, on the Pamunkey River, 
and the Knickerbocker had been taken for it, 
the fact of her ha\'ing been assigned to the 
Commission being entirely forgotten. The only 
mitigation of the anxieties of those who re- 



52 Hospital Tra7isports. 

rnained, for the ladies on board, was the assur- 
ance that the boat would soon return. Mean- 
time, we, on board, sailed up the Pamunkey, 
getting a fine chance to perfect the hospital 
arrangements. We unpacked tins and clothing, 
filled a linen closet in each ward, had beds put 
in order for three hundred, got up our stove, set 
kitchen in order, filled store closets, and arranged 
a black-hole with a lock to it, where oranges 
grow, and brandy and wine are stored box upon 
box ; and on reaching Franklin's head-quarters, 
the messenger transacted his business, we landed 
a file of soldiers and a surgeon of the division, 
who had sho^vn us great kindness on the voyage, 
and were allowed to push off again unmolested. 
The army lay all along the shore, and Gen- 
eral Franklin's head-quarters were in a large 
store-house back from the river. We found on 
our return to Yorkto^vn every one at work fit- 
ting up the Spaulding, 



An order had been obtained from the Quar- 
termaster for the planks and boards of some 
rebel platforms, ^vith which to put up bunks, 
etc., and a gang of contrabands were set at the 
business. While this was going on, a visit was 



Hospital Transports. 53 

made to the surgeon in charge of the shore hos- 
pitals, \\ith whom, after debate, it was agreed 
that the Elm City should be made ready by two 
o'clock to take on the sick who were waiting 
transport near the shore. The State of Maine 
was at the same time to be supphed and made 
ready to follow without delay. Going on board 
the Small again to cany' out these arrangements, 
A. was met by a note from the Quartennaster 
enclosing a telegram from the ]\Iedical Direc- 
tor of the army at Williamsburg, demanding a 
boat provided with " straw and water to be ready 
to take on two hundred sick and wounded withi?t 
two hours at QueejUs CreekJ' The despatch con- 
cluded, " This is of the utmost urgency. See 
the Sanitar}^ Commission." The only boat in 
the fleet that had a fair supply of water on 
board was the El7n City, already assigned for 
other dut}^, and she had no stores of food. 
There was about one day's supply of provis- 
ions for two hundred men on the Small, and 
A. ^\Tote at once to the surgeon in charge of 
the shore hospitals, that, to meet an order of 
the Medical Director, it had become necessary 
to change the arrangements just before made 
with him. He would have to withdraw the 
El?n City, but as supplies could be sent immedi- 
ately to the State of Maine, she could be got 



54 Hospital Transports. 

ready before night to take her place. The 
Small was then put in motion, and first the Elm 
City was hailed in passing, with orders to " fire 
up and heave short, and be all ready to move in 
half an hour," thence to the Alida, which was 
sent with the supplies to the State of Mai7ie^ and 
then back past the Elm City, ordering her to 
follow, and so in good time up to the mouth 
of Queen's Creek, by the side of the Kenne- 
bec, loading with wounded Secession prisoners, 
brought out of the creek by light-draft stem- 
wheelers. The process of embarkation, witnessed 
at a point some distance up the creek, was rude, 
careless, and quite unnecessarily painful ; the mis- 
erable wretches of rebels being made to climb a 
plank, set up at an angle of forty-five degrees, 
which they could only do by the aid of a rope 
thrown to them from the deck. .Strange to say, 
they themselves made no complaint, but ap- 
peared to think that they were well treated. So 
much for habit. The only assistance the Com- 
mission could render was to make the pathway 
less slippery by nailing cleats closely together 
across the steep planks. To do this, nails were 
bought of an old man near by, who at first 
asserted decidedly that not a nail could be 
found on his premises, until he was offered one 
dollar for twenty-five, when an abundant supply 
was discovered. 



Hospital Transports. 55 

Notwithstanding the Medical Director's tele- 
gram, that the case was one of the " utmost 
urgency," no sick men were found at the 
place of embarkation on the creek, nor could 
any be heard of nearer than at Williamsburg. 
Proceeding thither, with great difficulty, — pass- 
ing on the way directly through the field of the 
late battle, — A. inquired of the first man he 
met after entering the to\vn, " Where is the hos- 
pital ] " " The hospital, sir % Every house in 
the to^vn is a hospital ; you cannot go amiss 
for one." And this seemed to be literally 
true. Finding the Medical Director, he learned 
that he thought it important to relieve the hos- 
pitals by transportation as fast as he, in any 
way, could ; but not supposing it possible that 
the telegraphic order could be literally complied 
^vith, he had taken no measures as yet to send 
the two hundred patients in question to the 
place appointed for embarkation. It was agreed, 
however, that a convoy of ambulances should 
be started at daylight, and A. returned to the 
mouth of Queen's Creek, and despatched B. 
with the Squall to Yorktown to bring up ad- 
ditional stores from the Eb7i City, upon which 
the half-completed work of filling bed-sacks and 
other preparations also continued through the 
night. With the first boat-load of the wounded 



56 Hospital Transports. 

brought off in the morning, arose one of those 
conflicts of authority which so often embarrassed 
the Commission at this time in its work. 

(A.) At the first step I was met by a Brigade 
Surgeon coming on board from the Kennebec, who 
went about giving orders over my head, chan- 
ging my arrangements. As he persisted, and 
refused to compromise after I showed my writ- 
ten authority from the Medical Director, I told 
him that I should allow no sick to come on 
board until I was satisfied with the arrange- 
ments. He then declared that he should go to 
the Medical Director. " The very thing I want, 
and I will go with you. Meantime the sick, if 
any arrive, shall come on board, and Dr. Ware, 
here, will see to their disposition, if you please." 
He assented, and we then went to the landing 
and saw the lighter again loaded with sick, in 
the same manner as yesterday. When she was 
full, the surgeon said he should return upon her 
to the Ehn City. " But I thought we were to 
go together to the Medical Director, sir ! " "I 
have concluded not to do so, but have written 
to inform him that my authority is questioned." 
I deemed it best, after this, to go again to the 
Medical Director myself, and, after a tedious 
delay, got passage on a forage-wagon loaded 



Hospital Transports. 57 

with oats. AMiat with the continuous atmos- 
phere of thick yellow dust, and the jar of the 
hea\y wagon over execrable roads, this was a 
hard ride. 

I found the Medical Director, got a copy of 
an order which the Brigade Surgeon should have 
received yesterday, but which had failed of trans- 
mission to him, which failure justified officially 
his assertion of authority over a7iy transport 
coming at that time to that anchorage. 

Returned to the landing, and, the lighters 
having grounded, waited there, on the bank 
of the creek, with a hundred sick men, being 
devoured by mosquitoes and sand-flies. On 
reaching the Ehn City, found that, oaring to 
the conflict of authorit}^, and consequent im- 
perfect system, as well as to the insufficient 
number of attendants, the sick were but slowly 
and with difficulty taken care of Including the 
hundred coming off ^Yl\h me, the number on 
board was already over four hundred, or t^vice 
as many as the Medical Director had estimated, 
or I had had reason to calculate on in the sup- 
ply of water, medicine, and stores. 

After sunset I went again up the creek, and 
found eight men on the beach, left there sick, 
without a single attendant or friend within four 
miles, while, only the night before, tvvo of our 



58 Hospital Transports. 

teamsters had been waylaid and murdered, as 
was supposed, by the farmers of the vicinity, 
(guerilla fighting as they call it,) in the edge of 
the neighboring woods. After taking them on 
board the small boat, I asked who had charge 
of the party, wishing to make sure that no 
stragglers were left. A man was pointed out, 
who, because he was stronger or more helpful 
than the rest, seemed to have been regarded by 
them as their leader, though he had no appoint- 
ment. He was able to answer my inquiries 
satisfactorily, and then as he sat by my side, 
while I steered the boat, he told me about him- 
self His name was Corcoran. After the battle 
of Williamsburg he felt sick. There was an or- 
der to march, but his Captain said, " Good God ! 
Corcoran, you are not fit to march. Go into 
the town and get into a hospital." He walked 
three miles carrying his knapsack, and when 
he came to a hospital the surgeon told him he 
must bring a note from his Captain, and refused 
to receive him. He went out, and, as he was 
now very ill, he crawled into something like a 
milk-wagon and fell asleep. He was awakened 
by a man who pulled him out by his feet, so 
that he fell heavily on the ground and was hurt. 
He begged the man — a Secessionist, he sup- 
posed — for some water, and he gave him 



Hospital Transports, 59 

some ; and when he saw how sick he was, he 
said he would not have pulled him out only 
that he wanted to use his wagon. Corcoran 
then tried to walk away, but had not gone far 
when he fell, and probably fainted. By and by 
a negro man woke him up, and asked if he 
should not help him to a hospital. The negro 
man was very kind, but when they came to a 
hospital the doctor said he could not take him 
in, because he "had n't a bit of a note." Cor- 
coran said, "For God's sake. Doctor, do give 
me room to lie do^^m here somewhere ; it 's not 
much room I '11 take anyhow, and I can't go 
about any longer ! " It was then three days 
since he had tasted food. The doctor told him 
he could lie do\\ai, and he had not been up 
since till to-day. 

I have repeated the whole of this story as I 
heard it, while we were floating slowly do^vn the 
river, because the poor man who told it me 
died soon after we got on board, kindly attended 
in his last moments by our Sisters of Mercy. 
A letter to his mother was found in his pocket, 
and one of the ladies is ^vriting to her. 

This morning we returned to Yorktown, and 
took on the Elm City thirty more sick from 
a steamboat which had brought them from 
Cumberland on the Pamunkey. 



6o Hospital Transports. 

At ten o'clock the Elm City left for Wash- 
ington with 440 patients After noon I 

went ashore, called on the surgeon in charge of 
the hospitals and the Military Governor, made 
our arrangements for a trip up the river to 
collect scattered sick, and to tow our Wilson 
Small up to West Point for repairs. She has. 
been knocked into and run against by all the 
big boats till she is completely disabled. Re- 
turning on board for this purpose, was met by 
an officer with a telegram, begging that a boat 
might be immediately despatched to Bigelow's 
Landing, where an ambulance-train master had 
reported that " a hundred sick had been left on 
the ground in the rain, without attendance or 
food, to die." Bigelow's Landing being up a 
narrow, shoal, crooked creek, we ran about the 
harbor looking in vain for a boat of sufficiently 
light draught to send there. At length we de- 
termined to take our whole Sanitary fleet to the 
mouth of the creek, and, leaving the Alida and 
Knickerbocker outside, try to get up with the 
Elizabeth^ for we had no single vessel, large or 
small, in itself, suitably provided. 

We ran to the K^iickerbocker, but before we 
could get her under way a steamboat, in charge 
of a military surgeon, came along-side, and a 
letter was handed me, begging that I would take 



Hospital Transports. 6i 

care of one hundred and fifty sick men who had 
been taken on at West Point early in the morn- 
ing, and who had had no nourishment during 
the day. It was sunset, stormy and cold. I at 
first hesitated, on account of the greater need 
of those at Bigelow's Landing, but the surgeon 
in charge having induced me to take a look 
into the cabin, I changed my mind. The little 
room was as full as it could be crammed of sick 
soldiers, sitting on the floor ; there was not 
room to lie down. Only two or three were at 
full length ; one of these was dying, — was dead 
the next time I looked in. It was frightfully 
dirty, and the air suffocating. 

We immediately began taking them on board 

the Knickerbocker, It is now midnight. 

B. and Dr. Ware started with a part of our 
company and the two supply-boats, five hours 
ago, for Queen's Creek, with the intention of 
getting them to the sick at Bigelow's Landing, 
if possible ; if not, to go up in the yawl and 
canoe with supplies and firewood, and do what- 
ever should be found possible for their relief. 
Two of the ladies went with them. The rest 
are giving beef-tea and brandy and water to the 
sick on the Knickerbocker^ now numbering three 
hundred. 



62 Hospital Transports, 

(M.) The floors of lower and upper decks 
are covered with beds. The men all have 
tremendous appetites, lazily sleeping and eat- 
ing, — never miss a meal three times a day. If 
it were possible to have great eating-houses and 
wayside places, where volunteers could break 
down and sleep and doze for ten days or 
so, the men forced upon us by the medical 
authorities here and sent North would be doing 
good work in their regiments, — a good bath, 
seven days' rest, and twenty-one good meals are 

all they need. is housekeeper on this 

boat, and great pails of tea and trays of bread 
and butter, and rice and sugar, go all around the 
decks for breakfast. Good thick soup and bread 
for dinner, and breakfast repeated, at tea-time. 
"Peter," with six long-shore Maryland oyster- 
men (darkeys) runs the hospital kitchen, and has 
a daily struggle for the daily bread with the 
incorrigible fellows who shirk work, and for each 
meal protest against ever3rthing, and have three 
times a day to be brought round by highly col- 
ored blandishments. The sickest men, especially 
the one hundred and fifty last taken on, have 
plenty of beef-tea and cool drinks, made in the 
ladies' pantry, and all of them are now un- 
dressed and in clean, comfortable beds. 



Hospital Transports. 6 3 

(A.) I am quite at a loss to know what I 
shall do to-morrow. Unless additional force 
arrives we certainly cannot meet another emer- 
gency. It will not be surprising if this letter is 
found somewhat incoherent, for I have fallen 
asleep several times while writing it, hoping 
all the time that B. might arrive. We have a 
cold northeast storm and thick weather, and I 
conclude that his expedition is unable to get 
down, and I may go to sleep for the night. I 
have just been through the vessel, and find 
nearly all the patients sleeping quietly, and with 
every indication of comfort. 

May 16th, I fell so soundly asleep, that, 
fifteen minutes after I finished writing the above 
last night, it had to be several times repeated to 
me before I could understand where I was and 
what it all meant when the officer of the watch 
came to tell me that the supply boats were 
making fast to us, with over a hundred more 
sick. Anchoring the Alida at the mouth, B. had 
attempted to get up the creek with the Elizabeth, 
but, as I had feared, she went aground. Going 
on with the yawl, he found one of the steam- 
lighters at anchor with over a hundred sick and 
wounded men lying on the deck, who were 
soaked, not merely with rain, but from having 
been obliged to wade out to her in water knee- 



64 Hospital Transports. 

deep. He learned that, further up the creek, a 
few men, too badly wounded to stand, or too 
weak to wade off to the boat, had been left be- 
hind. No persuasion could induce the captain 
to return for them, but a threat to report him at 
head-quarters, at length made him fire up and go 
back. Eight were found just where I found 
eight on my night trip up the same creek a few 
nights before, some in a nearly dying condition. 
Having brought them off to the Hghter, and 
served stimulants to them, she was run down the 
creek to the supply-boats, the freight-rooms of 
which had, in the mean time, been as well as 
possible arranged to accommodate the patients. 

One of the ladies engaged in this night expe- 
dition of the Elizabeth gives the following ac- 
count of it in a letter to a friend. 

(N.) Not a moment is lost, — Mr. B. would 
not even let me go for a shawl, — and the tug is 
off. The Elizabeth is our store-tender or supply- 
boat ; her main deck is piled from deck to deck 
wdth boxes. The first thing done is to pick out 
six cases of pillows, six of quilts, one of brandy, 
and one cask of bread. Then all the rest is 
lowered into the hold. Meantime I make for 
the kitchen, where I find a remarkable old 
aunty and a fire. I dive into her pots and pans, 



Hospital Transports. 65 

I wheedle her out of her green tea (the black 
having given out), and soon I have eight buckets 
full of tea, and pyramids of bread and butter. 
The cleared main-deck is spread with two layers 
of quilts, and rows of pillows a man's length 
apart The poor fellows are led or car- 
ried on board, and stowed side by side as close 
as can be. We feed them with spoonfuls of 
brandy and water ; they are utterly broken 
down, wet through, some of them raving with 
fever. All are without food for one day, some for 
two days. After all are laid down. Miss G. and 
I give them their supper, and they sink down 
again. Any one who looks over such a deck as 
that, and sees the suffering, despondent attitudes 
of the men, and their worn frames and faces, 
knows what war is better than the sight of 
wounds can teach it. We could only take 
ninety; more had to go in a small tug-boat 
which accompanied us. Mr. B. and the doctor 
went on board of her, to give sustenance to the 
men, and in the mean time the Elizabeth started 
on the homeward trip. So the care of her men 
came to me. Fortunately only a dozen or two 
were very ill, and none died. Still I felt anx- 
ious j six of them were out of their mind, one 
had tried to destroy himself three times that 
day, and was drenched through, having been 
5 



66 Hospital Transports. 

dragged out of the water, into which he had 
thrown himself just before we reached him. 
When we reached the Knickerbocker^ Dr. Ware 
came on board, and gave me some general 
directions, after which I got along very well ; 
my only disaster had been that I gave mor- 
phine to a man who actually screamed with 
rheumatism and cramp. I supposed morphine 
would not hurt him, and it was a mercy to 
others to stop the noise, instead of which I 
made him perfectly crazy, and had the greatest 
trouble in soothing him. We did not move 
them that night, and the next morning, after 
getting them all washed, I went off guard, and 
Mrs. M. and Mrs. N. came on board with their 
breakfast from the Kiiickerhocker^ where the one 
hundred and eighty men were stowed and cared 
for. Soon afterwards my men were transferred 
to her. She still lies along-side, and we take 
care of her. She is beautifully in order ; every- 
thing right and orderly. It is a real pleasure to 
give the men their meals. The ward-masters 
are all appointed, and the orderlies know their 

duty. She will probably leave to-morrow 

As for the ladies, they are just what they should 
be, efficient, wise, active as cats, merry, light- 
hearted, thoroughbred, and without the fearful 
tone of self-devotedness about them* that sad 



Hospital Transports, 67 

experience makes one expect in benevolent 
women. We all know in our hearts that it is 
thorough enjoTOient to be do^-n here ; it is life, 
in short, and we would n't be anpvhere else 
(in view of our enjo}Tiient) for anything in the 
world. I hope people will continue to sustain 
this great work. Hundreds of lives are being 
saved by it. I have seen with my o^m eyes, 
in one week, fift}^ men who must have died any- 
where but here, and many more who probably 
would have done so. I speak of lives saved only ; 
the amount of suffering saved is incalculable. 
The Commission keep up the work at great 
expense. It has six large vessels now running 
from here. Government furnishes these, and 
the bare rations of the men, (or is supposed to 
do so,) but the real expenses of supply fall on 
the Commission ; in fact, eve?ythi?ig that makes 
the power and excellence of the work is supplied 
by the Commission. If people ask what they 
shall send, say, " ^loney, money ^ stimulants, and 
articles of sick-food." 

(A.) I went through the Elizabeth soon after 
she came along-side, and all who were awake 
were ver}^ ready to say they wanted for nothing. 
We concluded to let them remain where they 
were for the rest of the night. They had been on 



68 Hospital Transports. 

the creek shore from ten to fourteen hours, with- 
out a physician or a single attendant, a particle 
of food or a drop of drink, and this on a cold, 
foggy day, with rain and mist after nightfall. 
With half a dozen exceptions, they are marvel- 
lously well this morning, and profoundly grate- 
ful for the kindness which, I need not say, the 
ladies are extending to them. I am as yet 
unable to make up my mind what to do with 
them. The cold northeasterly storm continues. 
May i^tk. Our poor little Wilson Sinall 
since her first patching has been run into again 
and again, and for some days has been so broken 
up, that the poor little thing can't raise steam 
even. We have been towed about by our sup- 
ply-boats, and to-day shall quit her while she 
goes to Baltimore for repairs. We can't leave 
her without real regret, even to go temporarily 
on board the Spaulding^ one of the finest ves- 
sels of her size that I ever saw. We go on 
slowly with our fittings, having but poor lumber 
and only four carpenters. We have had, however, 
a detail, ordered by the military governor, of the 
" Infant Purdys," as the boys call the Enfaiis 
Ferdus, to fetch and carry, and shall have the 
Spaidding after next filling the Daniel Webster and 
the Ebn City, both which should be here before 
to-morrow night. We sent off the Knickei^bocker 



Hospital Transports, 69 

this morning at daylight to Washington, with 
two hundred and seventy sick and wounded. 
There are two ladies for each watch, and the 
value of their service in the minor superintend- 
ence is incalculable. 

The twenty ladies who came from New York 
were really a great godsend, although at first, 
with no boat to assign them to, we did not 
know what to do with them. They have all 
worked like heroes night and day, and though 
the duty required of them is frequently of the 
most disagreeable and trying character, I have 
never seen one of them flinch for a moment. 
Yesterday, I chanced to obser\^e, apropos to an 
excessively hard night's work, that all our hard- 
ships would be very satisfactor}^ to recall by 
and by, when Miss AI. said earnestly, " Recall ! 
why, I never had half the present satisfaction in 
any week of my life before ! " and there was a 
general murmur of concurrence. If you could 
see the difference between the men on our 
transports, and those on the vessels managed 
directly by government, — rude as the means at 
our command are, and although we do all we 
can to aid the latter, — you would better under- 
stand the incentive and the reward of exertion. 
.... The conduct of the patients is always 
fine ; — patient, brave, patriotic. I am surprised 



70 Hospital Transports, 

and delighted by it. We have sent details of 
the ladies with every vessel, and have now re- 
maining with us only four, besides the hired 
Crimean nurse, Mrs. . 

Captain , whom I spoke of as mortally 

wounded, and whom we had kept in the cabin 
of the Wilson Small since our visit to West 
Point, we sent off this morning on the Kiiick- 
erbocker feeling quite jolly and with a fair pros- 
pect of speedy recovery. I don't doubt he 
would have died but for good nursing and 
surgery, as he had exhausting internal hemor- 
rhages. 

We had two deaths on board last night, — 
one a fine fellow of sixteen, of pneumonia, in 
the lower deck ward, and a convalescent in the 
upper after ward. The latter came out of his 
room, saying he was faint, and wanted water, 
and, while the attendant turned for it, sprang 
over the guards into the water below. A boat 
was lowered, and efforts made to find him, but 
he must have struck his head, and, being 
stunned, did not rise. 



CHAPTER IV. 

(A.) We are lying in the Spaulding just 
below a burnt railroad-bridge, on the Pamunkey 
River, and, as usual, in the middle of the fleet of 
forage boats. The shores are at once wooded 
and wonderful to the water's edge, the fulness 
of midsummer with the vivid and tender green 
of Southern spring. Up the banks, where the 
trees will let us look between them, lie great 
fields of wheat, tall and fresh, and taking the 
sunshine for miles. The river winds constantly, 
— returning upon itself every half-mile or so, 
and we seem sometimes lying in a little wooded 
lake without inlet or outlet. It is startling to 
find, so far from the sea, a river whose name we 
hardly knew tvvo weeks ago, where our anchor 
drops in three fathoms of water and our great 
ship turns freely either way with the tide. Our 
smoke-stacks are almost swept by the hanging 
branches as we move, and great schooners are 
drawn up under the banks, tied to the trees ; 
the Spaulding herself lies in the shade of an elm- 
tree which is a landmark for miles up and do\vn. 



72 Hospital Transports. 

The army is in camp close at hand, resting, this 
Sunday, and eating its six pies to a man, and so 
getting ready for a move, which is planning 

in 's tent. Half a mile above us is the 

White House, naming the place, — a modern 
cottage, if ever white, now drabbed over, 
standing where the early home of Mrs. Wash- 
ington stood. We went ashore this morning with 

General , and strolled about the grounds, 

— an unpretending, sweet little place, with old 
trees shading the cottage, a green la^vn sloping 
to the river, and an old-time garden full of roses. 
The house has been emptied, but there are 
some pieces of quaint furniture, brass fire-dogs, 
&c., and just inside the door this notice is post- 
ed : " Northern soldiers who profess to rever- 
ence the name of Washington, forbear to dese- 
crate the home of his early married life, the 
property of his wife, and now the home of his 
descendants " ; signed, " A Granddaughter of 
Mrs. Washington"; confronted by Gen. McClel- 
lan's order of protection. 

(M.) We were going up to head-quarters, 
but refrained, on consideration, and came back 
to the Spaulding^ through army-wagons and pie- 
pedlers, and rewarded the three Generals who 
had come over to meet us with much-needed 



Hospital Transports, 73 

towels, handkerchiefs, and cologne. The river 
above us to the burnt railroad-bridge is crowded 
with steamboats and schooners. Four gunboats 
are our next-door neighbors. Beyond the bridge, 
round the corner, and out of sight, winds the 
Pamunkey, trees crow^ding do\^Ti to the brink 
and dipping their feet in the water. The Har- 
bor-Master wanting the room in the evening, we 
dropped down the stream and anchored by a 
feathery elm-tree. 

(A.) The next morning I saw the Medical 
Director at head-quarters. He seems to be in 
a worse boggle than ever as to the disposition 
of his sick. There are a great many still at 
YorktOAvn to be removed, but the work is now 
fairly systematized there, and the sick begin to 
collect here by hundreds, with a prospect of 
thousands, and no thought of system in dispos- 
ing of them, as far as I can see. The Director 
has ordered us to take on men at once, but our 
bunks are not up, and I have promised him the 
Dajiiel Webster and El7n City, which should be 
here to-morrow, and can take six hundred. 
B. has gone do^vn to bring up our boats 
from Yorktown, with all the stores that can be 
spared from our supply-ship. I shall try my best 
here to carry out the plan I have always wished 



74 Hospital Transports. 

to have pursued, — namely, the estabhshment of 
a large receiving hospital, from which those who 
really need to be sent away may be deliberately 
selected and transferred to proper vessels, prop- 
erly equipped. During my visit this morning 
to the Medical Director's tent, four persons 
reported their arrival with sick, and were in- 
formed that there were no accommodations for 
them. Tents had been received, but there was 
no detail on hand to pitch them, and if they 
were pitched, there were no beds to put in them. 
Sickness was increasing rapidly, every case show- 
ing the influence of malaria. The Medical Di- 
rector said, apparently with justice, that he had 
anticipated all this waste and confusion, and had 
made ample provision against it, but that almost 
none of his ordered supplies had reached him. 

By night the Daniel Webster and Eh7i City 
had come up from Yorktown, and I went up 
with the first, securing with some difliculty a 
berth for her, and began taking on the sick at 
once, the Medical Director being present and 
superintending the embarkation. He seemed 
to have entirely lost sight of the plan about 
determined upon the day before, to establish 
the shore receiving hospital, and was only anx- 
ious to get the sick off his hands as rapidly as 
possible, being appalled by their accumulation 



Hospital Transports. 75 

and the entire absence of provision for them. 
Just at this time B. got back from Yorktown, 
bringing a cheering account of the hospitals 
there, and at the same time the arrival of large 
medical supplies and hospital furniture was re- 
ported, so that I had little difficulty in bringing 
about a return to the plan of yesterday. 

The substance of the plan was this. The 
Elm City, able to accommodate four hundred 
patients, was to remain at White House as a 
receiving hospital; the Spaulding as a reserve 
transport in case of a battle ; on the occurrence 
of a battle, the serious cases of sickness to be 
transferred to the Spauldi?tg, and the Elm City 
used as receiving hospital for surgical cases ; 
the Knickerbocker to remain as a surgical trans- 
port. If an engagement should occur at the 
close of the week, the Spaulding would take to 
sea three or four hundred sick, freeing the shore 
hospitals to that extent, making about six hun- 
dred with what the Webster would take ; the 
Webster to return and take two hundred more 
the next week; the K7tickerbocker to take two 
hundred and fifty every twenty-four hours to 
Fortress Monroe ; thus relieving the shore hos- 
pitals to the extent of two thousand by the end 
of the next week, which would probably be all 
that was necessary. The Webster and Spaulding, 



76 Hospital Transports, 

being low between decks, crowded with berths, 
and deficient in ventilation, were not suited to 
the reception of sick and wounded for any other 
purpose than that of immediate transportation. 

(A.) To relieve myself of further responsi- 
bility in case of another change of plan, I wrote 
a memorandum of what we expected to be able 
to do, and got the Director to sign his approval 
of it. He told me yesterday that he meant to 
have those who were to take ship carefully 
selected, and that he did not believe there were 
half a dozen who ought to go from here. I how- 
ever saw being put on board the usual propor- 
tion of sick-in-quarters men, and told him. He 
attributed it to disregard of his orders by volun- 
teer surgeons, a difficulty for which he declared 
that there was no remedy short of an act of 
Congress. I found Dr. , his chief execu- 
tive officer, and got him to go to the sick camp, 
from which the men were being brought, when 
he discovered, as he afterwards told me, that the 
surgeon in charge had heard a report that the 
Sanitary Commission intended to have a receiv- 
ing-ship here, and on his o^vn responsibility 
(assuming that the Webster was to be used for 
this purpose) was sending men on board at ran- 
dom, and without reference to the gravity of 



Hospital Transports, "JJ 

their cases, his object being merely to get room. 
He also found that ambulances coming in from 
the advance had entered the train after it left 
the hospital,- and the men thus brought to the 
shore were allowed to go on board with those 
brought from the hospital, as if assigned for sea 
transportation by the surgeon in charge. I 
begged him to go on board and send off such 
as he found of these interlopers, but he thought 
it impracticable ; and finally, instead of the half- 
dozen proposed by the Medical Director yester- 
day, I found that he had passed t\vo hundred 
and fifty on board. Meantime the tents before 
spoken of had been finally pitched on a large 
field near the White House. They were bare 
of everything but shelter for the sick flocking in 
from the different regiments. A thousand men 
will probably be in them before to-morrow night. 
All day long to-day the surgeons and young 
men of the Commission have been working 
over there, and we have sent over bed-sacks, 
straw, blankets, and supphes for several hundred. 
After much sanitary poking, pushing, and oiling, 
the tents are some of them floored, and five 
great pig-kettles are started boiling, and kept 
always full of food for the sick. The patients 
will, however, greatly overbalance the provision 
made for them. It is hard work to galvanize the 



78 Hospital Transports, 

proper authorities into action. The post hospital 
record certifies now to sixteen hundred. There 
are five surgeons and assistants, one steward, no 
apothecary, and no nurses, except those selected 
from among the patients. Two wells have been 
dug, but the water of neither has as yet been 
fit for using. Water is brought from the AVhite 
House well, nearly a quarter of a mile distant, 
and until yesterday the whole supply was 
brought by hand. It is now wagoned in casks. 
We sent up three casks of ice from the Wehstet^s 
stock, which was found of great value. The 
greater part of the men are not very ill, and, 
with nice nourishment, comfortable rest, and 
good nursing, would be got ready to join their 
regiments in a week or t^vo ; but this is just 
w^hat they are not likely to have. 

The weather is growing excessively hot, and 
the army is pushing fonvard in a malarious 
country in the face of the enemy. We have re- 
ceived a few wounded men from the skirmishes 
of yesterday. There is obviously great danger 
that w^e shall be altogether overT\'helmed with 
sick and wounded in a few days. If the recom- 
mendation of my telegram of Sunday is adopted 
by the Surgeon-General, and a complete hospital 
for six thousand sent here from W^ashington, 
there will be reasonable provision for what is to 



Hospital Transports, 79 

be expected ; othenvise it is dreadful to think 
of it. There is no doubt that we might take 
care of a few hundred on our boats, — probably 
save the lives of some of them ; but consider- 
ing what a week, or, for that matter, a day, may 
bring forth, I think it right to throw the authori- 
ties still on their resources as much as we can, 
and, if possible, force them to enlarge their 

shore accommodations Nor, when ready, 

shall I be inclined to hasten the removal of the 
sick. I shall do my best to avoid taking any 
but serious cases. It is plain that the facilities 
so far offered in this respect have been abused, 
and that serious evils have come of it. Those 
responsible for the care of the sick here — I 
mean the military administrative as well as 
medical officers — have made the presence of the 
transports near them an excuse for neglecting 
all proper local pro\dsion, and e\idently have 
the idea that, in hurr}dng patients on board ves- 
sels, they relieve themselves of responsibilit}^* 
I saw this danger from the first, and have (I 

* The reader must constantly remember that the Com- 
mission did not supply vessels^ but merely furnished a few 
vessels already held by government with proper hospital 
arrangements, and that these were at the command of the 
medical authorities of the army, the Commission being 
responsible only for their internal administration. 



8o Hospital Transports. 

wish the Surgeon-General and our friends to be 
sure of this) constantly done all that I could to 
counteract it, not only by verbal protest, but by 
a habit of action which I know that B. and 
other friends here, who have not had the duty 
of looking at the matter as comprehensively as 
I have, have not been able always to regard as 
justifiable 

But this is not all. Of this hundred thousand 
men, I suppose not ten thousand were ever en- 
tirely without a mother's, a sister's, or a wife's do- 
mestic care before. They are wonderfully like 
school-boys. Then this is really the first experi- 
ence of nearly all our officers (who are their 
schoolmasters and housekeepers) in active cam- 
paigning. They are learning to take care of 
their men as a matter of self-interest. The 
men need to learn to make themselves content 
— of contented habit — away from home, to 
understand that this is in the bargain. It is 
obvious from the remarks we hear, that the ru- 
mor that sick men are to be sent home has a 
disturbing influence upon the education of the 
army in both these respects 

The K7iickerbocker has arrived while I have 
been writing ; thus I have all the elements of my 
plan approved by the Medical Director on Mon- 
day. But the question still troubles me greatly, 



Hospital Transports, 8i 

If they should have several hundred more pa- 
tients on shore than they have tents or beds for, 
and among them all several hundreds seriously 
ill, such as would properly be sent North, shall 
I break up my reserv^e, and have no provision 
for the avalanche of suffering which a great 
battle before Richmond would send do-wm upon 
us % I am afraid that I stand alone in my re- 
sistance to the demands of the present.* 



As it has been publicly reported that the 
Commission removed forty thousand men from 
the Peninsula, it should be here stated that the 
total number of soldiers, sick and wounded, con- 
veyed on the vessels in charge of the Commis- 
sion, during the summer, was eight thousand. 
Except under positive orders, which it was not at 
liberty to disregard, the Commission took no pa- 
tient on board its vessels until the opinion of a 
medical officer was had that his wound or illness 
was of such a character that he could not be fit 
for duty within thirty days. This was a standing 
order of the service, and was strictly enforced. 

It is impossible to give in small compass an 
adequate idea of the difficulties of the duty 
which the Commission had taken upon itself; 

* The wisdom of this resistance was satisfactorily estab- 
lished a few days later, as \\dll be seen. 
6 



82 Hospital Transports. 

difficulties which, though seeming small in 
themselves, were terrible, because the lives of 
men frequently hung on their being overcome, 
and that instantly. To present a full picture, in 
true and living colors, we must be qualified to 
throw over the whole the atmosphere of sympa- 
thy and enthusiasm which animated every heart 
in presence of our suffering soldiers. On a 
fixed and recognized basis we can do almost 
anything ; grooves are soon formed, in which 
affairs run smoothly. But to build with infinite 
toil on shifting sands ; to be called upon to fill 
leaky cisterns and keep them full ; to give our 
best strength to labors, the results of which 
often fade while we work, — these things re- 
quire a great and good cause, and a certainty of 
being sustained. 

(A.) All our vessels are, from the nature of 
engagement and intentions of those on board, in 
a constant state of pre-organization and disor- 
ganization. Our relations to the crews (seamen, 
firemen, &c.), upon whom we are dependent, 
differ in every vessel. Scarcely a day passes 
in which there is not a real mutiny among them, 
in which we have no right to interfere, but 
which it is necessary we should manage to con- 
trol. We have scarcely any established rights, 



Hospital Transports, 83 

and are can^dng on a vety large business by the 
favor of a multitude of agents^ whose favor in 
each case hangs upon a separate string. Ever}- 
hour brings its o^\tl difficult}'^, which must be 

met by itself Except in the results ac- 

comphshed, I need not say that the whole duty 
is exceedingly unpleasant, from the amount of 
dependence ^dthout rights, and of command 
without authority. 

No two individuals have the same under- 
standing of our duty or of our rights ; no two 
expect the same thing of us ; no t^-o look in 
the same direction for the remedy of any abuse, 
or the supply of any organic deficiency to which 
attention is called. I must caution you again 
not to form theories of what we are to do, and 
expect us to do it. We are liable to occurrences 
ever}^ day which make a new disposition of all 
the forces necessar}^ In fact, new and pre\dously 
unexpected arrangements are made daily, and 
these involve a continual modification of all 
plans. iVll that can be done is to be as fully 
prepared as possible for whatever can occur. 

I must act a little blindly, sometimes, 

— at all events, cannot always give you my rea- 
sons readily for what I determine upon. Twice 
I have come up the river from hardly an}1;hing 
more than a crude notion that it would be pru- 



84 Hospital Transpo7^ts, 

dent to be feeling that way, and ^YOuld cost but 
little ; and in each case it proved to be what 

calls " a gra?td good providence," leading 

to a complete change in our tactics, and to the 

saving of many lives The ladies are 

all, in every way, far beyond anything I could 
have been induced to expect of them. The 
dressers (two-years medical students) are gen- 
erally ready for whatever may be required, and 
work heroically. The male nurses are of all 
sorts. The convalescent soldiers have been 
the most satisfactory, because there was not 
among them the slightest taint of the prevailing 
sentiment of the volunteer nurses, that they were 
going upon an indiscriminate holiday scramble 
of Good-Samaritanism. There cannot be too 
much care in future that whoever comes here 
on any business comes, not to do such work as 
he thinks himself fit for, but such as he will be 
assigned to, and under such authority as will be 
assigned him. He or she must come as dis- 
tinctly under an obligation of duty in this 
respect as if under pay, and must expect to 

submit to the same discipline But, in 

truth, I have had comparatively little trouble of 
this sort as yet, and in all respects am surprised 
at the good sense and working qualities of com- 
panies made up as ours have been. 



Hospital Transports, 85 

As an illustration of the sudden changes of 
arrangement often found necessary at a mo- 
ment's notice, a report is found, in which it is 
stated that on one occasion, after overcoming 
great difficulties in preparing the Spauldi7ig for 
the conveyance of the sick, — having procured a 
party of thirty persons, including four surgeons 
and four ladies from New York, to go on board 
of her — on the 26th of May, while taking sick 
on board, an order was received immediately to 
remove all the Sanitary Commission's people 
and effects, and send her to Fortress Monroe to 
convey troops. The process of embarkation 
was at once arrested ; but by permission of 
Colonel Ingalls, the post commander, the re- 
moval of those on board was delayed until an 
ansvvxr could be received to the following tele- 
gram, which was immediately despatched to the 
Assistant Secretary of War, Mr. Tucker, then at 
Fortress Monroe. 

(Telegram.) "The Spaicldiiig was assigned 
to the Sanitary Commission after the Ocean 
Qtieen had been taken from them. The Spauld- 
ing was not well adapted to the duty, but was the 
only vessel then on York River which I would 
accept. There was no other, and there is none 
now here in which I would consent that a sick 
man should be sent outside. The hospitals at 



86 Hospital Transports, 

Washington and Alexandria are over-full, and I 
suppose the sick must go outside if they are to 
be taken away. There is here no hospital but 
a few tents pitched by the sick themselves, in 
which robust men could not spend a night, 
crowded as they are, with impunity. There is 
not the first step taken to provide for the wound- 
ed in case a battle should occur. We have been 
two weeks trying, under great difficulties, ta get 
the Spaulding tolerably fitted for the business \ 
have a hospital corps of thirty, sent for her 
from New York \ one hundred very sick men 
on board, one hundred more along-side \ shall 
we go on, or quit % " 

After waiting an hour, the Harbor-master's 
boat came past, hailing with " Mr. Tucker 
says, ' Go ahead,' sir ! " — and the transshipment 
of the sick to the Spaiildi?ig from the Elm City 
was recommenced. The same night, as it ap- 
pears from letters, just after dusk, the Harbor- 
master's boat appeared again, and Captain Saw- 
telle, the Master of Transportation, hailed with — 

" I am ordered to have the El??i City and 
eveiy other available vessel ready to leave here, 
with water and coal enough for eighteen hours' 
steaming, by break of day. You will oblige me 
very much if you will get the Elm City ready 
for me. How much coal has she on board 1 " 



Hospital Transports. 87 

" Not half enough for eighteen hours' steam- 
ing ! " 

" That is bad. I have to coai half a dozen 
others to-night ; there '11 not be time for all." 

"Very well, sir; then we'll manage it, by 
clubbing that which is on the K7iickerbocker and 
the Elizabeth^ 

" If you can do that I shall be very glad, for 
the order is urgent." 

(B.) We had just got through with a very 
long and hard day's work loading the Spaulding^ 
and were sitting at supper when this order 
came; but there was no help for it, so "All 
hands ! " it was again for a hard night's work. 

All the hospital fittings and furnishings of 
the Elm City^ including the bedding, commis- 
sar}^ and small stores, medical stores, and what 
not, required for the hospital treatment of four 
hundred and fifty sick men and the mainte- 
nance of their attendants, had to be unshipped, 
packed, and conveyed to the store-boats, and 
ninety sick men, some of them very sick indeed, 
— two died during the night, — to be trans- 
ferred and put to bed again on the Spaiddi?ig 
and Kjiickerbocker. It was a very dark night, 
and most of those who were engaged in this 
work were men of sedentary occupations, — 



88 Hospital Trmisports, 

students and clerks, — and women accustomed 
to a quiet and refined domestic life, and, as I 
said, all had just gone through with an extraor- 
dinarily fatiguing day's work. Some few broke 
down before morning. At the same time twenty 
tons of coal were to be got on board the Elm 
City from the Elizabeth and the K^iickerbocker, 
and wheeled to her deck-bunkers. Then quar- 
ters had to be found for her whole hospital com- 
pany, as well as provisions, on the other boats 
of the fleet, and to accommodate this necessity 
a general reorganization was found to be neces- 
sary. This was our Sunday's night-work after 
our Sunday's day-work. It was all done, every- 
body in place, and, except those required to 
watch the sick, asleep by four o'clock, and the 
Spaulding (with 350 sick in bed) and the Elm 
City (stripped for battle) both reported ready 
to sail with the morning tide. 

One day later, B. writes : — 

" Here we are at work again upon the Elm 
City. Sunday, we spent all night in stripping 
her, and now we have a day and night's work at 
least before us in handling over again the very 
same articles, refitting her for hospital service. 
It is an exercise of patience, but it must be 
done without delay. After we had got her all 



Hospital Transports, 89 

ready for transporting troops, a change in the 
plans of government occurred, and on applica- 
tion she was again assigned to the Commission." 

(M.) The Spaulding is bunked in every 
hole and corner, and is a most inconvenient 
ship for carrying sick men, everything above 
decks running to first-classing, and everything 
below to steerage. The last hundred patients 
were put on board, to relieve the over-crowded 
shore hospital, late last night. Though these 
night scenes on the hospital ships are part of our 
daily living, a fresh eye would find them dra- 
matic. We are awakened in the dead of night 
by a sharp steam-whistle, and soon after feel 
ourselves clawed by the httle tugs on either side 
our big ship, — and at once the process of 
taking on hundreds of men, many of them 
crazed with fever, begins. There 's the bringing 
of the stretchers up the side ladder between the 
two boats, the stopping at the head of it, where 
the names and home addresses of all who can 
speak are written down, and their knapsacks 
and little treasures numbered and stacked ; — 
then the placing of the stretchers on the plat- 
form, the row of anxious faces above and be- 
low decks, the lantern held over the hold, the 
word given to " Lower ! " the slow-moving ropes 



90 Hospital Transports. 

and pulleys, the arrival at the bottom, the turn- 
ing down of the anxious faces, the lifting out 
of the sick man, and the lifting him into his 
bed j — and then the sudden change from cold, 
hunger, and friendlessness, to positive comfort 
and satisfaction, winding up with his invariable 
verdict, — if he can speak, — " This is just like 
home ! '^ 

" Jimmy," eleven years old, one of the strange 
little city boys who are always drifting about, 
ran away from home last summer, after a drum, 
finally turning up on our stem-wheeler as char- 
boy, where he recognized a friend among the 
sick men, and devoted himself to him in the 
prettiest way. His runaway fever over, he 
longed for his mother ; so we tucked him into 
the Spauldi7ig and sent him home. The aston- 
ishing lack of common sense among men strikes 

us very forcibly Those who came 

down here have hearts, plenty of them, but not 
more than a head to four, and so they run 
round the wards, wondering where the best tea 
is, and the ice-water, w^hich they are probably 
looking at, at the time, and ask questions about 
everything under the sun. 

(B.) The Spaulding^ being all in order, with 
her sick men, corps of nine surgeons, ladies, and 



Hospital Transports. 91 

nurses, was started off, and the reserve force 
went on board the Knickerbocker. 



(A.) I have just bought what is left of a 
small cargo of ice, probably sixty tons, at twelve 
dollars, sent here on speculation for sale to sut- 
lers. We are now fairly well supplied at all 
points, I think. 

(A.) We began taking sick on the Elm City 
this afternoon. I telegraphed you about the 
crowded state of the post hospital. We had 
fed this morning sixty men who had been turned 
away from it on the ground that there was no 
room. I wrote to the surgeon in charge about 
this, and B. called on him with my note. He 
merely said that he thought there could not 
have been as many as sixty turned away ! These 
sixty men we heard of as lying upon the rail- 
road, without food, and with no one to look 
after them. So some of the ladies got at once 
into the stern-wheeler Wissahickon^ which is 
the Commission's carriage, and with provisions, 
basins, towels, soap, blankets, etc., went up to 
the railroad-bridge, cooking tea and spreading 
bread as they went. After twenty minutes' 
steaming, the men were found, put on freight- 
cars, and pushed down to the landing, fed, 



92 Hospital Traiisports. 

washed, and taken on the tug to the Elm City, 
Dr. Ware, in his hard-working on shore, had 
found fifteen other sick men, without food, and 
miserable ; there being ^' no room " for them in 
the tent hospital. He had studied the neigh- 
borhood extensively for shanties, found one, 
and put his men into it. The floor of the one 
-room up-stairs was six inches deep in beans, 
and made a good bed for them, and in the morn- 
ing the same party ran up on the tug, cooking 
breakfast for them as they ran, scrambling eggs 
in a wash-basin over a spirit-lamp. 

(A.) The army struck its tents one night last 
week, and silently stole away up the river. Bot- 
tom Bridge is ours, and no enemy met ; the rail- 
road is repaired at TOiite House, and trains will 
be running to-morrow ; barges, loaded with roll- 
ing stock and cannon, have been passing us on 
the river all day. 

The sick brought on board the Elm City this 
afternoon had been lying in a puddle, which 
nearly covered them. The water stood several 
inches deep in some of the tents. These men 
were selected by Dr. Ware, as the worst cases 
out of sixteen hundred in the shore hospital. 
(Several died before they reached the mouth of 
the river.) Dr. Ware himself laid hold to put 



Hospital Transports, 93 

up tents to protect men before the storm, and 
said that he saw half a dozen tents yet remain- 
ing, not put up at nightfall, though men were 
constantly arriving, and were left out in the 
ambulances. 

If an engagement occurs this side of Rich- 
mond, my opinion is that we shall have all the 
horrors of Pittsburg Landing in an aggravated 
form. I have tried in vain to awaken some of 
the Head-quarters officers to a sense of the 
danger j but while they admit all I say, they re- 
gard it as a part of war, and say, " After all, 
there never was a war in which the sick were as 
well taken care of. England does no better by 
her wounded ; true, they will suffer a good deal 
for a time, but that is inevitable in war," &c. 

AMiat ought to be done ? The Surgeon-Gen- 
eral cannot at once do our sea-transport business 
as well as we. By recruiting deficiencies at each 
trip, we can for the present continue to employ 
the Webster and the Spaulding for this purpose 
advantageously. We can maintain the distribu- 
tion of supplies. We want also a depot at this 
end for our sea-transports. For the rest, the 
Surgeon-General can at once have it done a ' 
great deal better than we, if he can place two 
steamboats under the Medical Director's orders, 
in addition to the Com??todof'e and Vandei'bilt^ 



94 Hospital Transports. 

equip them, or take them equipped from us ; 
put one good authoritative surgeon on board 
each, with two to four assistant surgeons, and 
six to ten dressers and stewards, and twenty to 
thirty privates for nurses, and require certain 
mles, to secure decent provision for the sick, to 
be maintained on them. 

It is ludicrous to see the enthusiasm of some 
of the surgeons at the outset about details ; the 
cleansing of patients, numbering, records of 
disease, pure water, &c., and their entire for- 
getfulness and inaptness to provide for more 
essential matters, — food, buckets, cups, vessels 
of any sort, and water of any sort. Doctors, 
nurses, and philosophers are much easier to be 
had, it seems, than men who would be able to 
keep an oyster-cellar or a barber-shop with credit. 

Dr. T. says that he is pestered by volunteer 
surgeons, who leave their business at home to 
have a short holiday professional excursion, and 
who always expect to be put in the " imminent 
deadly breach " at once. He has not tents, 
horses, forage, nor table-room for them. Don 't 
let any more surgeons come here, if you can 
help it. We try to treat them civilly, but all, 
ashore and afloat, feel anything but civilly to a 
man when he graciously proposes to be enter- 
tained and sent to the front as an honored guest, 



Hospital Transports. 95 

because, you understand, he is not one of your 
" physicians/' but a " surgeon," and not at all 
unwilling to take an interesting gunshot case in 
hand, though everybody else declines it ! If 
there is anything the regimental surgeons hate, it 
is to let these magnanimous surgical pretenders 
(it is of the pretenders I speak) get hold of their 

pet cases. For this reason I hope , who 

has a name, will assume the responsibility of 
our surgical hospital. 



CHAPTER V. 

(A.) May ^isf. — Sick men arriving Friday- 
night by the raihoad could not be provided for 
in the crowded field-hospital ashore, which still 
remained of but one fifth the capacity in tent- 
room which I urged it should be made three 
weeks ago. To make more room, on Saturday 
morning, 31st, we were ordered to take off four 
hundred upon the jS/m City. They were sent 
to her by smaller steamboats, and the last load, 
which brought the number up to four hundred 
and fifty, arrived so late Saturday night that she 
could not leave till daylight Sunday morning. 
The orders were to deliver the men at Yorkto^vn 

and return immediately. I urged Dr. , who 

was the surgeon in charge, and the captain and 
engineer to do their best, and telegraphed to 
have every preparation made at Yorktowm. 

June 1st. — We had sent out two parties to 
look for straggling sick, and visit the hospitals in 
the rear of the left wing. One of these returned 
at noon, having been by Cumberland to New 
Kent Court-House. From Dr. , who was 



Hospital Transports. 97 

in charge of the other, I received a despatch 
about sunset, stating that his party were assisting 
the surgeons in a field-hospital, to which wound- 
ed were crowding from a battle then in progress. 
Soon after midnight this party arrived on board, 
having come from the front with a train of 
wounded, and we then had our first authentic 
information of the fierce battle in which our 
whole left wing had been engaged. 



On that Sabbath day, after the departure of 
the Ebn City, the wounded of the battle of Fair 
Oaks began to arrive in large numbers by rail- 
road. After energetic remonstrances, with the 
responsible medical officer, on the part of the 
Commission, and a vain struggle to secure an ad- 
herence to some plan by which care and method 
in their shipment could be expected, a frightful 
scene of confusion and misery ensued at the 
landing, in the midst of which three government 
boats and tsYO of those assigned to the Commis- 
sion were loaded with wounded. We omit the 
painful particulars, because they could not be 
given without casting the gravest censure where 
censure would now be useless.* To understand 

* Some idea of the causes of the confusion at White 
House at this time may be formed from a communication 
7 



98 Hospital TransJ)07^ts. 

the extracts which follow, it is only necessary to 
know, that so well were things managed on the 
Elm City (which, it will be remembered, left, 
loaded with sick, in the morning), that she had 
proceeded to Yorktown, discharged her sick, 
and returned with beds made, reporting ready 
to receive wounded at White House before sun- 
set the same day. 

(M.) The Commission boats were all here, 
and ready to remove the wounded of the bat- 
tle of the I St and 2d of June. They filled 
and left with their accustomed order and promp- 
titude. After that, other boats, detailed by 
government for hospital service, were brought 
up. These boats were not in the control of the 
Commission. There was no one specially ap- 
pointed to take charge of them, no one to 
receive the wounded at the station, no one to 
ship them properly, no one to see that the boats 
were supplied with proper stores. Of course 
the Commission came fonvard to do all it could 

addressed by the representative of the Commission to the 
Medical Director, of which a copy is given in the Appen- 
dix (C), together with a memorandum of arrangements 
suggested subsequently, to provide against its recurrence. 
The officer who seems to have been most palpably at fault 
at White House has since been publicly disgraced for a 
similar offence. 



Hospital Transports, 99 

at a moment's notice, but it had no power ; 
only the right of charity. It could neither con- 
trol nor check the fearful confusion that ensued, 
as train after train came in, and the wounded 
were brought and thrust upon the various boats. 
But it did nobly what it could. Night and day 
its members worked, not, you must remember, 
in its own well-organized service, but in the 
hard duty of making the best of a bad case. 
Not the smallest preparation was found, in at 
least three of the boats, for the common food 
of the men. As for sick-food, stimulants, 
drinks, &c., such things scarcely exist in the 
medical mind of the army, and there was not 
even a pail or a cup to distribute food, had 
there been any. 

(N.) June ^th We had been helping 

the ladies on the El7n City all night, had returned 
to our quarters, and just washed and dressed, 

when Captain came on board, to say that 

several hundred wounded men were lying at the 
landing, — that the Daniel Webster No. 2 had 
been filled, and the surplus was being sent on 
board the Va7ide?'bilt^ — that the confusion was 
terrible ; there were no stores on board either 
vessel. Of course the best in our power had to 
be done. Our supply-boat Elizabeth came up. 



lOO Hospital Transports. 

We begged Mr. not to refrain from send- 
ing us because we had been up all night ; he 
said that he would n't send us, but if, in view of 
so much misery, we chose to offer our services to 
the United States surgeon in charge, he thought 
it would be merciful. We went on board, and 
such a scene as we entered and lived in for two 
days I trust never to see again. Men in every 
condition of horror, shattered and shrieking, 
were being brought in on stretchers, borne by 
contrabands, who dumped them anywhere, 
banged the stretchers against pillars and posts, 
and walked over the men without compassion. 
There was no one to direct what ward or what 
beds they were to go into. The men had 
mostly been without food since Saturday, but 
there was nothing on board for them, and the 
cook was only engaged to cook for the ship, 
and not for the hospital. 

The first thing wounded men want is lemon- 
ade and ice (with the sick, stimulants are the 
first thing) ; after that, we give them tea and 
bread. Imagine a boat like the Bay State, filled 
on every deck, every berth, — and every square 
inch of room covered with wounded men, — 
even the stairs and gangways and guards filled 
mth those who are less badly wounded, — and 
then imagine fifty well men, on every kind of 



Hospital Transports. loi 

errand, hurried and impatient, rushing to and 
fro over them, every touch bringing agony to the 
poor fellows, — while stretcher after stretcher 
still comes along, hoping to find an empty 
place ; and then imagine what it was to keep 
calm ourselves, and make sure that each man 
on our own boat, the Elm City, and then on 
this, was properly refreshed and fed. We got 

through about one o'clock at night, Mrs. 

and Miss having come off other duty, and 

reinforced us. We were sitting for a few mo- 
ments resting and talking it over, and bitterly 
asking why a government, so lavish and so per- 
fect in its other departments, should leave its 
wounded almost literally to take care of them- 
selves, when a message came that one hundred 
and fifty men were just arriving by the cars. It 
was raining in torrents, and both boats were full. 
We went on shore again ; the same scene re- 
peated. The Kennebec was brought up, and the 
one hundred and fifty men carried across the 
Daniel Webster No. 2 to her, with the exception 
of some fearfully wounded ones who could not 
be touched in the darkness and rain, and were, 
therefore, left in the cars. We gave refresh- 
ments to all ; a detail of young men from the 
Spaulding coming up in time to assist, and the 
officers of the Sebago (gunboat), who had seen 



I02 Hospital Transports, 

how hard pressed we were in the afternoon, 
volunteering for the night-watch. Add to this 
sundry members of Congress, who, if they 
talked much, at least worked well. We went 
to bed at daylight with breakfast on our minds. 
At half past six we were all on board the Web- 
ster No. 2, and the breakfast of six hundred 
men was got through with before our own. 

(A lady on the Knickerbocker }j Sunday. — 
" Three hundred wounded to come on board ! " 
I wish you could see the three hundred white 
beds, with a clean shirt and drawers laid ready 

for each man They began to bring them 

in about noon. Many of them were shockingly 
hurt ; but the men were proud of their wounds, 
and one of them, an artist, private of a New 
York regiment, was thankful that he had only 
lost a leg, — " so glad it was n't his arm ! " We 
went directly at work washing them, doing what 
we could, too, at dressing wounds which had 
been hastily bandaged on the battle-field thirty- 
six hours before. Men very patient and grateful 
always. 

(A.) Sunday Night. — The Knickerbocker had, 
by estimate, three hundred and fifty on board. 
The night being fine, many were disposed of on 



Hospital Transpo7ds. 103 

the outer decks, and before I left, at eleven 
o'clock, nearly all had been washed, dressed, and 
put to bed decently, and were as comfortable as 
circumstances would admit of our making them. 
All had received needed nourishment, and such 
surgical and medical attention as was immedi- 
ately demanded. Leaving the Knickerbocker in 
this satisfactory condition, I came back in a 
small boat, at midnight, to the landing, where I 
found that the Elm City already had five hun- 
dred wounded on board. I ordered her to run 
down and anchor near the K7iickerbocker. There 
had been a special order in her case from the 
Medical Director to go to Washington. (I judge 
that this was given under the misapprehension 
that she had failed to go to Yorktown, and had 
her sick still on board.) She was unable to go 
at once for want of coal, which could not be 
furnished her till the evening of the next day 
(Monday). This finished the Commission's 
boats for the present. The State of Maine 
had been ordered to the landing by the Har- 
bor-master, and the wounded remaining on 
shore, excluded from the Elm City, were flock- 
ing on board of her.* Our ladies on the El?n 
City sent them some food, and we put on board 
from our supply-boat bedding and various stores, 
of which there was evident need, without wait- 



104 Hospital Transports. 

ing to be asked, and without finding any one to 
receive them, the surgeons being fiilly engrossed 
in performing operations of pressing necessity. 

The battle had been renewed in the morning 
of this day (Sunday), and we had sent a relief 
party, composed of medical students and male 
nurses, with supplies of stimulants, lint, etc., to 
the battle-field hospitals. A portion of this 
party returned about midnight, with another 
large train of wounded. All our force that 
could possibly be withdrawn from duty on the 
boats was immediately employed in distributing 
drink, and in carrying the wounded from the 
railroad to the boat. Some men died on the 
cars. I made another visit to the Knickerbocker 
in the morning, and on my return (Monday), 
found that a train had just arrived, and the 
wounded men were walking in a throng across 
the scow to the Webster No. 2, Government Hos- 
pital, the only boat remaining at the landing. I 
knew that she was not prepared for them, and 
sent for Dr. S., the representative of the IMedical 
Director. Dr. S. could not be found. I asked 
for the medical officer in charge of the Webster 
No. 2. The Captain said there was none, and 
that he had no orders except to bring his boat 
to the landing. I inquired for the surgeon in 
charge of the railroad train, but could find none. 



Hospital Transports, 105 

There was no one in charge of the wounded. 
Meantime they were taken out of the cars, and 
assisted towards the landing by volunteer by- 
standers, until the gang-planks of the boat, 
the landing-scow, and the adjoining river-banks 
were crowded. I finally concluded that Dr. S. 
must have intended them to go on board the 
Webster No. 2. I could find no one in the 
crowd who professed to have received his or- 
ders, but, as many were nearly fainting in the 
sun, I advised the Captain to let them come on 
board. He did so, and they hobbled on, till the 
boat was crowded in all parts. The Small was 
outside the Webster No. 2, and our ladies ad- 
ministered as far as possible to their rehef 
Going on shore, I found still a great number, 
including the worst cases, Ipng on litters, gasp- 
ing in the fervid sun. I do not describe such a 
scene. The worst cases I had brought upon 
the Small, Two died on the forward deck, 
under the shade of the a^^ning, within half an 
hour. One was senseless when brought on ; 
the other revived for a moment, while ]Mrs. G. 
bathed his head with ice-water, just long enough 
to whisper the address of his father, and to 
smile gratefully, then passed away, holding her 
hand. 

At the time of which I am now writ- 



io6 Hospital Transports. 

ing (Monday afternoon), wounded men were 
arriving by every train, entirely unattended, or 
with at most a detail of two soldiers, two hun- 
dred or more of them in a train. They were 
packed as closely as they could be stowed in 
the common freight-cars, without beds, without 
straw, at most with a wisp of hay under their 
heads. Many of the lighter cases came on the 
roof of the cars. They arrived, dead and living 
together, in the same close box, many with awful 
wounds festering and swarming with maggots. 
Recollect it was midsummer in Virginia, clear 
and calm. The stench was such as to produce 
vomiting with some of our strong men, habitu- 
ated to the duty of attending the sick. How 
close they were packed, you may infer from a 
fact reported by my messenger to Dr. Tripler, 
who, on his return from Head-quarters, was pres- 
ent at the loading of a car. A surgeon was told 
that it was not possible to get another man upon 
the floor of the car. " Then," said he, " these 
three men must be laid in across the othe?'s, for 
they have got to be cleared out from here by this 
train I " This outrage was avoided, however. 

Need I tell you that the women were always 
ready to press into these places of horror, going 
to them in torrents of rain, groping their way 
by dim lantern-light, at all hours of night, carry- 



Hospital Transports. 107 

ing spirits and ice-water ; calling back to life 
those in despair from utter exhaustion, or again 
and again catching for mother or wife the last 
faint whispers of the dying ] 

One Dr. was at this time the only man 

on the ground who claimed to act as a medical 
officer of the United States. He was without 
instructions and without authorit}^, and, though 
miraculously active, could do nothing toward 
bringing about the one thing wanted, orderly 

responsibiht}', and while he was there, , who 

might othen^dse have done something, would not 
interfere. Dr. Ware, of our party, was at one tune 
the only other medical man on the ground. The 

Spauldi?ig, Dr. in charge, arrived ^vlonday 

night, but not in a condition to be made directly 
useful, being laden with government stores, which 
could not at once be removed by the quarter- 
master. Her physicians and students, however, 
could never have been more welcome. I put 
one half her eager company at once at work on 
the Webster JVo. 2. Captain Sawtelle, at my re- 
quest, pitched a hospital tent for the ladies at 
the river-bank by the railroad, behind which a 
common camp-kitchen was established. To this 
tent quantities of stores have now been con- 
veyed, and soup and tea in camp-kettles are 
kept constantly hot there. Before this arrange- 



io8 Hospital Transports. 

ment was complete, and until other stores ar- 
rived, we were for a time very hard put to it to 
find food of any kind to meet the extraordinary 
demand upon us. Just as everything was about 
giving out, B. found a sutler, who told him that 
he had five hundred loaves of bread on board 
of a boat which had just arrived at Cumberland, 
but he had no way of getting it immediately up. 
A conditional bargain was immediately struck, 
and the Elizabeth hastened off to Cumberland 
to bring up the bread. When it arrived, to our 
horror, it proved to be so mouldy it could not 
be used. B., almost crying with disappointment, 
started again to make a search through the ex- 
hausted sutlers' stores of the post. While doing 
so, he came upon a heap of boxes and barrels 
unopened and "unaccounted for." "What's all 
this % " " Sutlers' goods." " ^Vho owns them % " 

" I do. I am the sutler of the New York, 

up to the front. I want to get them up there, 
but I can't get transportation." "What's in 
here % " said B. in great excitement. " Mack'rel 
in them barrels." "What's in the boxes'?" 
" That 's wine biscuit. There 's two barrels of 
molasses and a barrel of vinegar. I 've got 
forty barrels of soft tack, too." "^Vhere's 
that r' " That 's one of 'em" ; and B., hardly 
waiting for leave, seized a musket, and jammed 



Hospital Transports, 109 

a head off. It was aerated bread, and not a 
speck of mould upon it ! He bought the sut- 
ler's whole stock on the spot, and in half an 
hour the ladies were dealing out bread spread 

with molasses, and iced \dnegar and water 

The trains with wounded and sick arrive at 
all hours of the night j the last one before day- 
light, generally getting in bet^veen t\\'elve and 
one. As soon as the vv'histle is heard, Dr. Ware 
is on hand, (he has all the hard work of this 
kind to do,) and the ladies are ready in their 
tent ; blazing trench-fires, and kettles all of a row, 
bright lights and savory supplies, piles of fresh 
bread and pots of coffee, — the tent door opened 
^\dde, — the road leading to it from the cars 
dotted all along the side ^\dth little fires or 
lighted candles. Then, the first procession of 
slightly wounded, who stop at the tent-door on 
their way to the boat, and get cups of hot coffee 
with as much milk (condensed) as they want, 
followed by the slow-mo\dng line of bearers and 
stretchers, halted by our Zouave, while the poor 
fellows on them have brandy, or wine, or iced 
lemonade given them. It makes but a minute's 
delay to pour something down their throats, and 
put oranges in their hands, and saves them from 
exhaustion and thirst before, in the confusion 
which reiorns on most of the crowded 2:ovem- 



no Hospital Transpoids, 

ment transports, food can be serv^ed them. 
When the worst cases have been sent on board, 
those which are to go to the shore hospital the 
next day are put into the twenty Sibley tents, 
pitched for the Commission, along the railroad, 
and our detail of five men start, each with his 
own pail of hot coffee or hot milk, and crackers 
and soft bread, with lemonade and ice-water, 
and feed them from tent to tent, a hundred men 
every night ; sometimes one hundred and fifty 
are thus taken care of, for w^hom no provision 
has been made by government. Dr. Ware sees 
them all, and knows that they have blankets 
attendants, stimulants, &c. for the night. "When 
the morning comes, ambulances are generally 
sent for them from the shore hospital, but 
occasionally they are left on the Commission's 
hands for three days at a time. They would 
fare badly but for the sleepless devotion of Dr. 
Ware, who, night after night, works among them, 
often not leaving them till two or three o'clock 
in the morning. The ladies from the Webster^ 
and other Commission boats, visit the shore hos- 
pital bet^veen their voyages, and carry to the 
sick properly prepared soups and gruels. 

Jufie 3^. I cannot disentangle now the events 
of the last few days, nor have I a very exact 
idea of the numbers we have taken care of. 



Hospital Transports, 1 1 1 

We put t\vo hundred and fifty on Webster No. i 
on Monday, among them General D evens and 
Colonel Briggs of Massachusetts, and, fearing 
that all intermediate hospitals would be full, and 
the weather continuing very hot, sent her, in the 
absence of orders, to Boston. The same day 
the Vanderbili and Knickerbocker were filled, and 
to-day the Spaulding, Between two and three 
thousand wounded have been sent here this 
week, and at least nine tenths of them have 
been fed and cared for, as long as they re- 
mained, exclusively by the Commission. 

(M.) Generally the government hospital boats 
are ready and glad to accept our assistance, 
but now and then one \vill stand off in the 
stream " all ready," needing no help, till finally, 
and when the sick are coming on board, at the 
last moment, not a pound of bread or ounce of 
meat ^^dll be found ready for them. The men 
are expected to bring rations for a day or so, in 
their haversacks, haversacks meanwhile being 
lost at the front, and men being too badly 

hurt to think of any such provision 

This is where the Commission comes in, and 
kettles of soup and tea, with fresh soft bread, 
gruel, and stimulants, are sent to all these boats 
from the tent kitchen, and with them go cups 



112 Hospital Transports. 

and spoons, and attendants to distribute the food. 
Many hundreds of men have been helped in this 
way, who, without such a provision, would, to 
say the least, have greatly suffered. Two days 
ago there was a hospital transport near us, " all 
ready," according to their o^vn account, and after 
the wounded men came on board, before the first 
surgical case could be attended to, they had to 
rush over to our boat for lint, bandages, rags, 
pins, towels, and stimulants. One man had been 
without the slightest nourishment all day until an 
hour before his shoulder was taken off; then, 
when it was too late, the surgeon hurried over 
to ask us to take him beef-tea and egg-nog, and 
we crossed the coal-barges and administered it ; 
all this after the Doctor had himself told me 
that morning that they needed no help. It is 
just the same with lint and bandages, sponges 
and splints, all which the Commission supplies 
freely. There was another boat near us with 
a good staff and plenty of assistants, and every- 
thing looking so fair that we supposed it all 
right, particularly as we were assured that she 
had been "preparing" for some weeks, and 
had "all that was necessary." All day last Sun- 
day they were putting men on board, selecting 
four hundred from the five hundred sick and 
wounded who came down on Friday to the 



Hospital Transports. 1 1 3 

post hospital, and who were all received on ar- 
rival and taken care of by Dr. Ware and his 
assistants. ^Mien they had been put on board, 
and wanted food at the moment, it was not 
ready, — plenty of it in the rough, but nothing 
cooked in anticipation \ and at six o'clock in 
the evening, as we were crossing the boat from 
the Small^ which lay outside, we found the boat 
full of very sick men, feverish and thirsty, and 
calhng for water, and no help at hand. We 
asked for basins j there were none on board ; 
and to add to the rest, the forty '' Sisters," who 
had come down unexpectedly, by some one's 
order, had all struck for keys to their state- 
rooms, and sat about on their large trunks, 
forbidden to stir by the Padre, who was in a 
high state of ecclesiastical disgust on the deck 
of the K^iickerbocker^ at not finding pro\ision 
made for them, including a chapel. la- 
bored wdth the indignant old gentleman upon 
the unreasonableness of expecting to find con- 
fessionals, &c. erected on the battle-field, but 
to no purpose. There sat the forty " Sisters," 
clean and peaceful, with their forty umbrellas 
and their forty baskets, fastened to their places 
by the Padre's eye, and not one of them was 
allowed to come over and help us. So our 
boat's company went to work. Dr. Ware getting 
8 



114 Hospital Transports. 

for us all we needed from the Commission's sup- 
plies, and before the boat left, the sickest men 
were washed and fed ; large pails of beef-tea, 
milk-punch, and arrow-root were made, enough 
to last for the worst cases until they reached 
Fortress Monroe, and at half past seven we 
climbed over the guards to the deck of the 
S7?ian, and the boat cast off. We wrote all the 
names and home-addresses of the sickest men, 
who might be speechless on their arrival, and 
fastened the papers into their pockets. It was 
hard to have the " Sisters," who would have been 
so faithful, and who were so much needed, shut 
away from the sick men by the etiquette of their 
confessor. It is unpleasant to abuse people 
for inefiiciency. Possibly they have all that is 
necessary on these government boats, stowed 
away in boxes somewhere, but at the precise 
moment when it is needed no one knows any- 
thing about it. Such boats either have no one 
at their head, or where there is one there are 
many, which is worse than none. 

We have, up to this time, sent away on the 
Commission's boats, since Sunday, 1,770 pa- 
tients. These, after having once been got upon 
beds, have been all methodically and tenderly 
cared for. The difficulties to be overcome in 
accomplishing it were enormous, and the great- 



Hospital Transports, 115 

est of them of a nature which it would now be 
ungrateful to describe. We have also distributed 
to government boats and hospitals an immense 
quantity of clothing and hospital stores. 

(A.) Rustic Sidneys are so common we have 
ceased to think of it. "I guess that next fel- 
low wants it more 'n I do," — " Won't you jus' 
go to that man over there first, if you please, 
marm ; I heam him kind o' groan jus' now ; 
must be pretty bad hurt, I guess : I ha'n't got 
anythin' only a flesh-wound ! " You may always 
hear such phrases as these repeated by one 
after another, as the ladies are moving on their 
first rounds. 

There is not the slightest appearance of a 
conscious purpose to play the hero or the Spar- 
tan. Groans, and even yells and shrieks, are not 
always restrained, but complaint is never uttered, 
though the Irish, especially when not very severe- 
ly wounded, are sometimes pathetically despond- 
ent and lachrymose, and the Frenchmen look 
unutterable things. But gratitude and a spirit 
of patience never fails, a cheerful disposition 

seldom In this republic of suffering, 

individuals do not often become ver}^ strongly 
marked in one's mind, but now and then one 
does so unaccountably. I am haunted by the 



1 1 6 Hospital Transports, 

laughing eye of a brave New Hampshire man, 
— laughing I am sure in agony, — whom I saw 

on the . [This was one of the worst of the 

government transports, badly managed, hastily 
loaded, and densely crowded.] He was lying 
closely packed among some badly wounded 
rebels, and in giving them some little attention 
I had passed him by, because he looked as if 
he wanted nothing, — so differently from the 
others. Afterwards returning that way, they 
seemed to have all fallen asleep j but this man's 
strange, cheerful eye met mine as I was careful- 
ly stepping over his feet. "Do you want any- 
thing, my man % " " Well, now you are there, I 
don't care if you h'ist that blanket off my leg a 
piece ; the heft on 't kind o' irks my wound." 
" Certainly," I said ; drawing it down, and know- 
ing at once that he must be painfully wounded ; 
" is there nothing else I can do for you % 
would n't you like a cup of water % " " If 
you 've got some cool water handy, I should 
be obliged to you. I 've got some in my can- 
teen they give me this morning, but it 's got 
wann." I brought him some, as soon as I 
could. "That tastes good," says he. " Do you 
know where this boat 's goin' % " " She goes 
first to Fortress Monroe ; whether they will 
send her on from there to New York, or take 



Hospital Transports, 1 1 7 

you ashore there, I don't know. It will be 
decided when you get there." "They must n't 
keep me there. I must go home." " Where is 
your home % " " It 's a place called Keene, up 
in New Hampshire." '^ What 's the matter with 
you % " " Got a ball through my thigh." " Did 
it touch the bone?" "Yes, broke it snap off." 
" Rather high up the thigh, is n't it ] " " Just 
about as high as it can be ; the doctors, they 
tell me, — well, first they told me that 't would 
kill me if they did n't take it off, and then 
they told me 't would kill me if they did take 
it off, it 's so high up, they say they can't do it. 
So, accordin' to their account, I 've got to go 
anyhow. That 's what the doctors make out ; 
but I '11 tell you what I think : I think God 
Almighty 's got something to say about that. 
If he says so, well and good, I ha'n't got 
nothin' to say. But I 'd like to get back to 
Keene. They must send me. I know I '11 
die if they don't. They must." " I 'm afraid 
it would hardly do to send you out to sea, — 
the motion of the vessel — " " O, I a'n't a 
bit afraid of that, I don't mind the hurt on 't. 
The old doctor, he was n't a goin' to send 
me j he said 't wan't no use, and there was n't 
no room. But after they 'd got about load- 
ed up, the young doctor came along, and I 



1 1 8 Hospital Transports, 

got hold o' him, and I told him they must 
send me, and finally he told 'em they must 
get me in somehow. That did hurt, that 'are. 
Fact is, I fainted away when they put me in, it 
hurt so. I never felt anything like that. But I 
tell you, when I come to, and found I was rat- 
tlin' along down here, I did n't mind how much it 
hurt." ^^Is it painful now % " " Well, when they 
step round here, and when the engine goes, it 's 
kinder like a jumping toothache, down there. 
Well, yes, it does hurt pretty bad, but I don't 
mind, if they '11 only let me go home. I guess 
if they '11 let me go home, I can pull through it 
somehow ; and if I don't, — that 's God Al- 
mighty's business, too ; I a'n't consamed about 
that." And he smiled again, that brave, man to 
man, knowing New England smile. I found 
that his wound had not been dressed in three 
days ; fortunately there was time for me to get 
Ware to dress it before the boat left. 

(N.) We lie here just outside some 

other vessels at the railroad wharf The one 
nearest the wharf is the Knickerbocker (one of 
our own boats, a refreshing sight to sick and 
well). On it we are placing the wounded as they 
now come in, somewhat slowly.* Since last 

* This refers to tlie second loading of the Knicker- 
bocker aft€r the battle. 



Hospital Transports. 1 1 9 

night at ten o'clock there have been one hun- 
dred and sixty-five brought on board. This 
nearly completes the list of the wounded by the 
Saturday and Sunday engagements, excepting 
some t^vo or three hundred who are in a hos- 
pital on the extreme right, some ten miles from 
the railroad. There have now been brought 
in to the hospital boats about three thousand 
seven hundred men, of whom six or eight hun- 
dred were rebels. It has been touching to hear 
the expressions of surprise and gratitude from 
some of these young, fresh-looking Southerners, 
as they received tender care from the hands 
of those who were ministering to them in their 
sad suffering. Of course our own wounded 
were carried off the field first, and this left the 
others with wounds for some time not dressed. 

(M.) Among the sick and wounded who 
came on board last night were several Seces- 
sionists. One w^hom I was attending took my 
hand, with tears in his eyes : " God bless you, 
Miss." Another, who was near death, — he had 
the most terrible wound I ever saw, — said, 
gently : '^ God forgive me, honey, if it was 
wrong. I thought it was right, but I don't like 
it, that 's the truth. I would rather have died 
for the old flag, but — I thought it was right. 



I20 Hospital Transports. 

There, let them bury that with me" (showing 
me a bracelet of hair on his arm). " It 's my 
wife's, honey ; it is. My watch you may keep, 
and if ever the time should come when you can 
send it to her, please do so." 

(A.) Naturally enough, the prisoners do not 
"bear up " as well as our own men. There 
is not only more whimpering, but more fretful- 
ness and bitterness of spirit, evinced chiefly in 
want of regard one for another. 

(N.) On board the Co77i7?tission' s boats we see 
the unavoidable miseries of war, and none other. 
So soon as the men come on board, all suffering 
except that of illness ceases, and we know and 
see that every comfort and every chance for 
recovery is freely supplied. I have a long his- 
tory to tell, one of these days, of the gratefulness 

of the men I often wish, — as I give a 

comfort to some poor fellow, and see the sense 
of rest it gives him, and hear the favorite speech, 
" O, that 's good ! it 's just as if mother was 
here," — that the man or woman who supplied 
the means for the comfort were present to see 
how blessed it is. Believe me, you may all give 
and work in the earnest hope that you alleviate 
suffering, but none of you realize what you do, 



Hospital Transpo7^ts. 121 

— perhaps you can't even conceive of it unless 
you could see your gifts i7i use. I often think 
of the money and supplies which, by the good- 
ness of others, passed through my hands be- 
fore I left home. How little I then knew their 
value ! How little I then imagined that each 
article was to be a life-giving comfort to some 
one sufferer ! 

The object of the Commission is not clearly 
understood. Those who admire its noble, wise 
work naturally feel the wish that larger power 
should be given to it. But the object of the 
Commission itself is not this. It seeks to bring 
the government to do what the government 
should do for its sick and wounded. Until that 
object is accomplished, the Commission stands 
ready to throw itself into the breach, as it did 
during that dreadful battle-week, and as it does, 
more or less, all the time. The thing it asks 
for is not the gift of power, but that the govern- 
ment should come forward and take the work 

away from it There are rumors that this 

much-desired change will be effected. I am not 
afraid to say that no enterprise ever deser^-ed 
better of the country than this undertaken by 
the Sanitar}^ Commission. Alive to the true 
state of things, ever aiming at the best thing to 
be done, and striving to bring everything to bear 



122 Hospital Transports, 

upon that, it has already fulfilled a great work, — 
let those who have reaped its benefits say how 
great and how indispensable. 

Since yesterday morning we have been lead- 
ing a life which Mr. ■ feels to be one of such 

utter discomfort that we all try to make the best 
of it for his sake, though I will admit to you that 
it is very wearing to have no proper place to 
eat, sit, or sleep. No matter ! our Wilson Small 
will be back soon, and we shall resume our 
happy home life on the top of the old stove. 
We had luxury which did not please us on board 

the , and piggishness which pleased us still 

less on board the , and yet we are the most 

cheerful set of people to be found anywhere. 

This morning, just as Mr. was sitting with 

his head on his hand, sighing over the horrid 
breakfast to which we ladies had been subject- 
ed, some one looked up and spied the Daniel 
Webster coming up. Such vitality as seized us ! 
The good Webster I always perfect, prompt, and 
true. In a moment, Dr. Grymes and Captain 
Bletham were on board, and did n't we shake 
hands all round ! I suppose you know the 
Webster had to put into New York in conse- 
quence of a storm, which would have perilled 
the lives of many of the sick if they had pursued 
the voyage to Boston. 



Hospital Transports, 123 

I often feel the pleasantness of our (the 
ladies') footing amongst all these people, official, 
military, naval, and mxedical. They clearly re- 
spect our work, and rightly appreciate it ; they 
strengthen our hands when they can, they make 
no foolish speeches, but are direct and sen- 
sible in their acts and words, and when work 
is over, they do not feel toward us as " women 
with a mission," but as ladies, to be with whom 
is a grateful relaxation. I must say our position 

here is particularly proper and pleasant 

I suppose from eight to ten thousand troops 
have arrived here within a week. At first, I 
scarcely noticed their coming. I heard their 
gay bands, and the loud cheering of the men as 
the transports rounded the last bend in the river, 
and came in sight of the landing, but such 
sounds of the dreadful other side of war filled 
my ears, that, if I heard, I heeded not. For the 
last night or two, the arrivals by moonlight, with 
the cheers and the gay music, have been really 
enlivening. We see the dark side of all. You 
must not, however, gather only gloomy ideas 
from me. I see the worst — short of the actual 
battle-field — that can be seen. You must not 
allow yourself to think there is no brightness 
because I do not speak of it. 



124 Hospital Transports, 

(M.) We have on two of our boats nine con- 
traband women, from the Lee estate, — real Vir- 
ginia " darkies," and excellent workers, — who 
all ^'' wish on their souls and bodies " that the 
Rebels could be " put in a house together and 
burned up." " Mary' Susan," the blackest of 
them, yielded at once to the allurements of free- 
dom and fashion, and begged Mr. K. to take a 
little commission for her the next time he went 
to Washington. " I wants you for to get me, 
sar, if you please, a lawn dress and hoop-skirt, 
sar." The women not working on our boats 
do the hospital washing for us in their cabins on 
the Lee estate, and I have been up to-day to 
hurry them with the Kiiickerbocker' s eleven hun- 
dred pieces. The negro quarters are decent 
and comfortable little houses, with a wide road 
between them and the bank which slopes to the 
river. Any number of little darkey babies are 
rushing about, and tipping into the wash-tubs, 
and in one cottage we found two absurdly small 
babies taken care of by an antique bronze, 
calling itself grandmother. Babies had the mea- 
sles, which would n't " come out " on one of 
them. So she had laid him tenderly in the 
open clay oven, and, with hot sage-tea and an 
unusually large brick put to his morsels of feet, 
was proceeding to develop the disease. Two 



Hospital Transports. 125 

of the colored women and their husbands work 
for us at the tent kitchen, close by the shore, 
and entertain us by their singing. The other 
night Molly and Nellie collected all their friends 
behind their tent and commenced, in a sort of 
monotonous recitativo, a condensed narrative 
of the creation of the world ; one giving out a 
line and all the others joining in. They went 
straight through from Genesis to Revelation, 
following with a confession of sin and exhorta- 
tion to do better, — till suddenly their deep hu- 
mility seemed to strike them as uncalled for, 
and they rose at once into the " assurance of the 
saints," and each one instructed her neighbor at 
the top of her voice to 

" Go tell all the holy angels, 
I done, done all I ever can. " 

Just as they came to a pause the train arrived ; 
midnight, as usual, and the work of feeding and 
caring for the sick began again. Dr. Ware was 
busy with his nightly work of seeing that the 
men were properly lifted from the platform cars 
and put into the Sibley tents ; H. was '' process- 
ing " his detail with additional blankets and 
quilts ; and Wagner, our Zouave, and his five 
men, were going the rounds with hot tea and 
fresh bread, while we were getting ready beef- 
tea and punch for the use of the sickest through 



126 Hospital Tra7isports, 

the night. By two o'clock we could cross the 
gang-plank to the S7?iall again, feeling that all 
the men were quiet and comfortable. 

We women constantly receive noble and pa- 
triotic letters from the parents and friends of the 
soldiers who have died here among us, one of 
our duties being to ^\Tite to the families of those 

we have had care of Airs. had sent her 

the other day, from one of the Regiment, 

a little poem in such delicate acknowledgment 
of kindness received that I must copy it : — 

''From old St. Paul till now, 
Of honorable women not a few 
Have left their golden ease in love to do 
The saintly work that Christlike hearts pursue. 

"And such an one art thou, — God's fair apostle, 
Bearing his love in war's horrific train ; 
Thy blessed feet follow its ghastly pain, 
And misery, and death, without disdain. 

*' To one borne from the sullen battle's roar, 
Dearer the greeting of thy gentle eyes. 
When he aweaiy, torn, and bleeding lies. 
Than all the glory that the victors prize. 

" When peace shall come, and homes shall smile again, 
A thousand soldier-hearts in Northern climes 
Shall tell their little children, with their rhymes, 
Of the sweet saint who blessed the old war-times." 



CHAPTER VI. 

(A.) We were " stampeded " last night. A 
train arrived, and the ladies were at the kitchen 
ashore getting tea ready. Dr. Ware went to the 
cars, as usual, and two or three wounded men 
were brought down on litters, to be put on the 
Elm City. The doctor coming along with them 
said, "These men were shot on the train, just 
before arriving here." After they had been taken 
on board, M. said to me, "Do you know they 
are getting ready to take in the gang-plank, 
and are firing up on the Elm City ? " I went 
on board ; could not see the captain ; the engi- 
neer was having the fires pushed, and said the 
orders had come from Colonel Ingalls, com- 
mander of the post, to fire up and get away as 
quickly as possible. All our boats had received 
the same. I went out, and ^\\\h difficulty got 
the ladies to go on board. M., who had gone 
up to head-quarters to see if there was no 
mistake, came back mth the message, " Drop 
down below the gunboats, at once, and look out 
to keep clear of vessels floating down on fire." 



128 Hospital Transports, 

We of course obeyed orders, knowing nothing 
of the reasons for them, and in half an hour 
all our boats were anchored a mile below, with 
steam up. As soon as this was accomplished, I 
took a yawl, and pulled back to the railroad 
landing, where I found everything quiet. Ware 
and H. taking care of the sick who had been 
left in the tents. Walking on to the post head- 
quarters, I found all the camp-followers, team- 
sters, sutlers, railroad and barge men, organ- 
izing in companies, and arms and ammunition 
serving to them. M., who had volunteered for 
this duty, had a company. I found the Provost- 
Marshal, who told me that the enemy had sud- 
denly appeared, apparently in considerable force, 
about three miles from here, simultaneously on 
the river and the railroad. A wagon train had 
been captured, two or three schooners burned, 
the telegraph cut. It was presumed that it was 
an expedition designed to play havoc with this 
post, where there is an immense amount of 
anny supplies of all kinds, with a force absurdly 
inadequate to its protection, — in fact, but a weak 
regiment of infantry, and a weaker one of horse ; 
but some artillery was landing, and before day- 
light they would have two capital 'batteries of 
Napoleons ready, and were gathering supports. 
I got permission to send for the Small, which is 



Hospital Transports, 129 

short enough to be quickly handled at the land- 
ing, and to put on her the sickest of the men 
who had been brought do^\Ti during the day to 
be sent to the post hospital, and who Y\'ere still 
in tents near the landing, as it seemed to me 
they would suffer less disturbance afloat than 
ashore in case the attack was made. It was 
daybreak before I got them at anchor below 
again. At sunrise I was allowed to bring all the 
boats up ; but as there was a standing order 
against the shipment of sick at this time, (in or- 
der to reserve the transports for the wounded,) 
we kept our patients on the Small for some days, 
the post surgeon not being able to receive them. 
The women were greatly annoyed and indignant 
at being sent, with the boats, out of harm's way. 

(N.) We sat on deck w^atching the 

fleet of transports, hospital-ships, and supply- 
boats hurrying after and past us, and the signal- 
ing from gunboat to gunboat, which seemed 
done by a lantern at the end of a long pole, 
dashed up and do^^^l through the darkness. It 
was midnight when a messenger came in the 
yawl, with orders to bring the S??iall back to the 
railroad. All the way up we worked, getting 
ready for as many sick as could be taken on her. 
Forty-five beds filled every corner of the boat, 



130 Hospital Transports, 

and beef-tea, punch, and gruel were ready by the 
time we reached the railroad-bridge. Dr. Ware 
and H., who had not run away, had selected the 
sickest of the men in the tents, and had them all 
ready to put on board, and with the help of the 
Spauldm^s nurses, whom we called for on the 
way up, we took them on board that night, and 
the next day and the next we had them in our 
little boat, — some of the sickest men I ever 
saw, — crazy and noisy, soaked, body and mind, 
with swamp-poison, and in a sort of delirious 
remembrance of the days before the fever 
came, — days of mortal chill and hunger, — 
screaming for food, for something "hot," for 
"lucifer matches" even. Two of these men 
died on board, not able to give their names. 

The fright about the raid having somewhat 
subsided, we settled down again, as w^e sup- 
posed, into our daily routine of fitting up trans- 
ports, and of receiving and feeding the sick who 
arrive on the trains. All sorts of messages and 
people are constantly coming to our tent; — 
surgeons from the front, to have requisitions 
filled for lemons and onions,* beef-stock, and 

* As scorbutic symptoms had been reported in certain 
regiments, the Commission was sending small quantities 
of fruit and vegetables by every returning hospital trans- 
port. It afterwards sent whole cargoes, as will be seen 
by reference to Appendix D. 



Hospital Transports. 131 

brandy ; orderlies, for officers sick, and just ar- 
rived to take the mail-boat, needing refresh- 
ment ; and miscellaneous crowds, who have 
constantly to be instructed that we are not 
free sutlers. Captain had kindly pro- 
vided a wall tent for our use, and Dr. Ware, 
in thought for our comfort, has it pitched close 
by our kitchen, and the sickest men arriving by 
train are put into it, and we are able to care for 
them without hurrying across the railroad track 
with our hot gruel. Here I found myself the 
other day, spoon-feeding, with a napkin under 
his chin, the pleasant chaplain who came down 
on the Daniel Webster to join his regiment on 
the first day we started as a hospital company. 
His turn had arrived, poor fellow, and he came 
back to us with a blister on each temple, and 
symptoms of typhoid. We had in the tent at 
the same time five or six officers, all sick. Our 
little comforts, fans, slippers, mosquito-netting, 
napkins, cologne, are great comforts to the sick 
men, though to be sure one man did say to me 
to-day, w^hen I put a few drops from my bottle, 
"Gegenilber dem Julichs Platz^' on his handker- 
chief, " O my ! how bad that smells ! I don 't 
mind it much, but perhaps you have spilt some 
of that medicine you have in your bottle 1 " My 
cologne of cologne ! 



132 Hospital Transports, 

The St. Ma7'k arrived about this time, a 
splendid chpper East-Indiaman, and, after her, 
the Euta'pe^ both first-class new sailing vessels, 
entirely reconstructed interiorly by the Commis- 
sion, as model hospital-ships, and having their 
own corps of surgeons, dressers, &c. Drawing 
too much water to come up the Pamunkey, they 
anchored at Yorkto^^m, and the sick were taken 
down on steamboats to them, and they made 
the voyage round to New York in tow of 
steamers. 

(A.) Jwie 27//^, 1862. I was intending to 
go down to the St, Mark last night. We had 
had some rumors the day before that Stonewall 
Jackson was making a dash to get in our rear, 
and take this post. I did not mind them, but 
about three o'clock, P. ]\I., yesterday, Captain 
S., the active executive here, came to me, and 
said, privately : '^ Get away from this as soon 
as you can \ the enemy is here again ; our 
pickets are driven in, and I think we shall be 
obliged, within three hours, to bum ever}^thing 
that can't be run do^vn the river. Give what 
help you conveniently can to the vessels on the 
river as you go do^\m, but don't stop this side 
of Cumberland." I called in our men and 
women, found that our machiner}^, which had 
been repairing for two days^ was in such disor- 



Hospital TraiispoiHs. 133 

der that it could only be used at all by the 
exertions of three men supplying the place of 
certain fractured iron, T\-ith their arms; and then 
but ver}- slowly, and with great care, of course. 
We were in no condition to help anybody else. 
I pushed off, however, in quarter of an hour, 
taking the ]Vissahicko7i and Elizabeth in com- 
pany. One or two boats started before us, and 
several immediately after. As we passed do^^•n, 
we found the gunboats with their boarding-net- 
tings up, and all ready for action, and the skirt 
of wood along the shore of the ^Miite House 
grounds cut away to allow a sweep to their 
guns. AVe left our consorts at Cumberland to 
take forage vessels in tow down, and went on 
slowly to West Point, where we anchored. Soon 
after noon to-day the Captain reported his 
machiner}- repaired, and we started to return to 
AMiite House. The river was full of vessels 
coming down. We could learn nothing from 
them except that ever}thing had been ordered 
to " clear out." We got here about sunset, and 
found almost ever}-thing gone, — a remarkably 
orderly and successsful removal of a vast 
amount of stores. Among what remained, whis- 
key and hay were distributed, and ever}-thing 
was ready for firing. 

Stonewall Jackson had not come down upon 



134 Hospital Transports. 

us as we had supposed, but our right wing had 
been turned, and the enemy was hourly expect- 
ed to be pushing into White House. The au- 
thorities at "Head-quarters" were by no means 
as much surprised as we were at it all. Every 
preparation had been quietly making for several 
days for the arrival of the enemy, and the evac- 
uation and repossession were effected in as neat 
and complete a manner as if the affair had been 
arranged between the parties by the penny-post. 
The Knickerbocker^ and other of our boats, 
just as they were, were used as retreats for rail- 
road-men and straggling Northerners, exclusive 
of sutlers. The government boats, with the 
Co^nmodorCj Daiiiel Webster^ &c., were ordered 
up, and the fifteen hundred sick men from the 
shore hospital put on board. The Sisters of 
Charity, who had been for a few days occupy- 
ing the White House, were distributed through 
the different government craft, glad now to do 
what they could ; and so, all in good order, the 
hospital ships, one after another, departed, the 
Wilson Small lingering as long as possible, till 
the telegraph wires had been cut, and the enemy 
announced by mounted messenger to be at 
"Tunstall's," worried constantly in his advance 
by Stoneman with his cavalry, till all should 
have got safely off, when he would fall back 



Hospital Transports. 135 

towards Williamsburg, and the rebels would walk 
into our deserted places. 

So we came away, — watching the mo\dng 
off of the last transports and barges, and of 
the Canoniais^ head-quarters' boat, with Colonel 
Ingalls and Captain Sawtelle and General Casey 
and staff. But by far the most inter- 
esting incident was the spontaneous movement 
of the slaves, who, when it was known that the 
Yankees were running away, came flocking from 
all the country about, bringing their httle mov- 
ables, frying-pans and old hats and bundles, to 
the river-side. There was no more appearance 
of anxiety or excitement among them than 
among the soldiers themselves. Fortunately 
there was plenty of deck-room for them on the 
forage boats, one of which, as we passed it, 
seemed filled with women only, in their gayest 
dresses and brightest turbans, like a whole load 
of tulips for a horticultural show. The black 
smoke began to rise from the burning stores 
left on shore, and now and then the roar of the 
battle came to us, but they were quietly nursing 
their children and singing hymns. The day of 
their deliverance had come, and they accepted 
this most wonderful change in absolute placidity. 



136 Hospital Transports. 

All night we sat on the deck of the Small, 
slowly moving away, watching the constantly 
increasing cloud, and the fire-flashes over the 
trees toward A\niite House ; watching the fading 
out of what had been to us, through these 
strange wrecks, a sort of home where we had all 
worked together and been happy, — a place 
which is sacred to some of us now, from its 
intense, living remembrances, and for the hal- 
lowing of them all by the memory of one who 
through months of death and darkness lived 
and worked in self-abnegation, — lived in, and 
for, the sufferings of others, and finally gave 
himself a sacrifice for them. 



A 



P P E N D I X. 



APPENDIX A. 

See page 23. 

''^The Commissmt is at this time actually distributing 
daily, of hospital supplies, much more than the govern- 
7?ient.''^ 

This refers to a temporary emergency alone, for, not- 
withstanding the recognized necessity for volimteer aid, 
it is believed that the aggregate of all hospital supplies 
voluntarily furnished by the people through the Sanitary 
Commission and othenvise, great and unparalleled as this 
gi-atuitous supply is, is but about one tenth as much as is 
furnished by government. This fact ought to be kept in 
mind, as there is a natural tendency on the part of those 
who are rendering volunteer aid to exaggerate the relative 
magnitude of their own labors, while the permanent and 
yastly larger pro\Tsions of government are underrated, 
and a habit of imjust censure indulged in, in speaking of 
deficiencies which have to be supplied. The character 
of this censure generally indicates complete ignorance of 
the failures of other governments when engaged in war, 
and a careless estimate of the immense labors involved, 
and difficulties which invariably have to be overcome, in 
providing for the constant necessities and exigencies of a 
great army. It is the opinion of those whose sympathies 
with the suffering of the soldiers on the one hand, and 
whose careful study of facts on the other, ought to give 



1 40 Appendix. 

weight to their judgments, that never before, in the 
world's history, was an army so well cared for in all its 
departments. Quartermaster's, Commissary, and Medical, 
and that never before, when deficiencies were discovered, 
were they, on an average, as speedily remedied. In 
every great trial, by war, of a nation, it has been found 
necessaiy to employ a very large number of men in posi- 
tions of the gravest responsibility, for which they were not 
adapted by nature or by training. This involves, of 
course, not only incompetency for duties assumed, but 
necessarily opens a door to continued neglect of trusts, 
frauds, and peculations, which, under ordinary circumstan- 
ces, would seem to be of stupendous magnitude. This is 
always a part of the cost of war, and, so far from being the 
peculiarity of a republican form of government, or of the 
present occasion, in no modem war have frauds and in- 
efficiency of administrative service been anything like as 
slightly manifested in the condition and efficiency, under 
all circumstances, of the troops in the field ; and this, 
whether we have regard to their food, clothing, equip- 
ments, transpojtation, or, finally, to the provision which has 
existed for the sick and wounded. The sustained average 
health, vigor, and good spirits of our several grand armies, 
in the great variety of circumstances in which they have been 
placed, tells of a virtue and a vital force in our people and 
in our institutions, which, rightly understood, should put to 
shame much customary cavilling of flippant critics. 

The writer of this note has recently travelled through a 
region larger than the whole of England, which a year 
before his visit was held by one hundred and fifty thou- 
sand rebels in arms, and with advantages for defensive 
warfare such as no country of equal extent in Europe 
possesses. In every mile of this road he saw traces of 



Appendix. 141 

the desperate fanaticism of personal ambition and pride, 
reckless of the life and property of others, with which 
its defence had been conducted. And beyond it he found 
those who were re-establishing the supremacy of republi- 
can law in this land. He spent more than a week with 
them, and in that time he heard no complaint so frequent 
or so bitter as that against the whimperers and mischief- 
makers they had left behind. The health and patience 
of the men was a matter of profound astonishment to 
him. That the officers w^ere many of them exceedingly 
unfit for their responsibility cannot be denied. In what 
army are not many of the officers found to be so ? But 
even this was chiefly to be attributed to the ver}- influence 
"which, in its worst form, was made the cloak of the con- 
spiracy which brought about the rebellion, and was com- 
monly felt and said to be so. And thus the army, fighting 
the open, fights also mth the insidious enemies of the 
country, and when it returns both will have been con- 
quered. But if incompetency is common among State- 
appointed officers, what e\4dence does the condition of 
the army give of the action of great talent, integrity, in- 
dustry, and patriotic zeal, in the manner in which it is 
provided for ! Xowhere did the writer fail to find the 
men clothed and fed as never were soldiers clothed and 
fed in the pettiest frontier war before. He reached a 
division in the extreme advance ; bivouacked in a swamp, 
its wounded picket-guardsmen were being brought in and 
cared for, methodically, and well ; not with the refine- 
ment of a civilized home, but as wounded soldiers sel- 
dom have been in the history of wars, under the most 
favorable circumstances, before in the world. There was 
nothing which, thus situated, the surgeon could \\dsh to 
have mth him, which he had not This division, since it 



142 Appendix. 

came to the war, had marched over four thousand miles, 
and fought six great battles, and now here in the swamp, 
wading from hammock to hammock, the enemy in force 
in the next really dry land, the men looked as well in 
health, and as cheerful in spirits, as a company of har- 
vesters at their nooning. They were carefully examined. 
Were they in want of clothing? No. Were they well 
shod? Yes. Were they well fed? They had full ra- 
tions, and could ask for nothing better. What did they 
want? "To finish up the business they came here for, 
and go home." Nothing else. It was actually so there 
at the advanced post in the swamp, and it was so — it is 
so at this moment — wherever, on sea or ashore, the 
seven hundred thousand men now employed by our gov- 
ernment are scattered at their work. By what despotic 
power was a machine ever made that could have accom- 
plished this, in two years? 

F. L. O. 



APPENDIX B. 

See page 42. 

REGULATIONS FOR 

FLOATING HOSPITAL SERVICE 

OF THE SANITARY COMMISSION, 

for the campaign in virginia. 

Terms of Service. 

The Sanitary Commission, being itself under military- 
authority, in order to meet its responsibilities, must require 
of all persons who engage in the hospital service of the 
army under its direction, that tliey place themselves, for 
the time being, entirely at its disposal. 

Those who volunteer their services gratuitously being 
supposed to do so fully and in good faith, no distinction 
can be known between them and those who may be paid 
for their services, it being understood that these services, 
in both cases, once engaged or accepted, are to be claimed 
equally of right by the Commission. 

Administration. 
An agent of administration for the Commission will be 
appointed for each hospital vessel, who w4U be regarded 
by those on board as responsible for her fittings and sup- 
plies. 

Wards. 

Each vessel will be di\aded into hospital wards, de- 



144 Appendix. 

signed each for the accommodation of from fifty to one 
hundred and fifty patients. In case of convalescents, a 
larger number will be properly included in a ward. 

Surgeons. 

A surgeon in charge will be appointed to each vessel, 
who will be responsible for the reception, classification, 
and distribution of patients in the wards. He will sign 
any necessary official medical reports of the vessel. Each 
ward will be placed under the especial charge of one sur- 
geon, and, if practicable, there will be a surgeon for each 
ward. 

Assistants to Surgeons. 

An assistant to the surgeon (with the title of Ward- 
master) is to be constantly on duty in each ward. Under 
instructions from the surgeon of the ward, he will superin- 
tend and be responsible for the entire treatment of the 
patients of the ward, during the hours in which he is ap- 
pointed to be on duty. 

Nurses. 

Two or more nurses are to be constantly on duty in 
each ward. They \\dll perform any and all duties neces" 
sary in the care of the patients, under instructions from 
the surgeons received through the ward-masters. 

Dispensary. 

A dispensary will be established on each vessel, and 
one or more apothecaries will be placed in charge of it. 
They mtlLI be responsible for the medical stores, and for 
their proper compounding and issue upon requisitions 
of the surgeons through the ward-masters. 



Appendix. 145 

HosprrAL Pantry and Linen Closet. 

These will be in charge of ladies, who will issue to 
ward-masters or nurses, or themselves administer and dis- 
pense, under proper control of the surgeons, special diet 
and drink, and articles of bed and personal clothing for 
the patients. 

Watches. 

Ward-masters and nurses, and all who have part in 
duty of a constant character, will be divided into two 
watches, which will be on duty alternately, as follows : — 



I. 


From 7 A. M. to i P. M. 


A 




2. 


'' I P. M. to 4 P. M. 


B 


(dog watch.) 


3- 


" 4 P. M. to 7 P. M. 


A 


(( (( 


4- 


" 7 P. M. to I A. M. 


B 




5- 


*' I A. M. to 7 A. M. 


A 




6. 


*' 7 A. M. to I P. M. 


B 


(second day.) 



Time of Meals. 



BREAKFAST. 



One watch at 6.40 A. M. (being then off duty.) 
The other at 7 A. M. " '' 



One watch at 12.30 P. M. 
The other at 1.15 P. M. 



One watch at 6.40 P. M. *' 

The other at 7 P. M. "■ 

House Diet. 

BREAKFAST. 

To be ready at *] A. M. 

Bread (or Toast) with Butter. 
Coffee or Tea. 
10 



146 Appendix, 



To be ready at 1.15 P. M. 

Beef Soup and Boiled Beef or Beef Stew. 

Boiled Rice or Hominy. 

Bread or Crackers. 

TEA. 

To be ready at 7 P. M. 

Bread or Toast or Crackers, \\ith Butter. 
Coffee or Tea. 

When practicable, the house diet ^^^ll be served at 
tables to such patients as are able to come to them. When 
not practicable to arrange tables, such patients as may be 
designated by the surgeons will be divided into squads of 
forty, and a squad-master appointed to each, who will re- 
ceive and distribute to the rest the prepared diet, as 
may be found most convenient. Patients not abk to 
leave their beds will not be included in these squads, but 
house diet will be served to them by the nurses of their 
wards, if ordered by the surgeon. 

Special Diet. 
The surgeons will ascertain from the administrative 
agent, or from the ladies, what articles of diet are availa- 
ble on the vessel, and in their morning rounds direct what 
choice shall be made from these for the diet of each pa- 
tient, for whom the house diet would not be suitable, 
during the succeeding twenty-four hours. The ward- 
master on duty at the hour for surgeons' morning rounds 
will, in regular order, be on duty at each meal-time during 
the follo%ving twenty-four hours, and will consequently be 
able to direct the entire diet of each patient from verbal 
instructions. He should, as soon as possible, notify the 
proper person (no rule in this respect being practicable for 



Appendix. 147 

• 

all vessels) of the quantity of each article of special diet 
which will be required at each meal in his ward, and at 
the proper time should (if necessary) send the nurses for 
it, and see it properly distributed. 

Surgeons' Rounds. 

Surgeons' rounds should commence at 9 A. M., and 
at 6 P. M. The ward-master on duty will closely attend 

the surgeon, and receive his instnictions as he passes 
through his ward. The ward-master off duty may also 
attend the surgeon at this time, for the benefit of receiv- 
ing instructions directly. The surgeon may make this a 
duty, othen^dse it will be optional. 

All Hands. 

In receiving and discharging patients, or in any emer- 
gency which makes it necessary, ward-masters and nurses 
may be required to do duty in their watches off. In 
cleaning, fitting, or repairing the vessel for hospital pur- 
poses, they ■\\-ill act under orders of the administrative 
agent 

Receiving and Distributing Patients. 

Before patients are taken on board, the vessel should 
be properly moored or placed, gang^vays or other means 
of entrance arranged, and, if possible, all duties com- 
pleted, for the time being, in the performance of which 
the crew of the vessel are required. The surgeon, who 
should have previously informed himself of the character 
of the accommodations for patients in all parts of each 
ward, should detail a sufficient number of guides and 
bearers to convey the patients, and of all necessary attend- 
ants at the gang^Yay, and -v^ithin the wards. These should 



148 Appendix. 

• 

remove their boots, and each squad of bearers should be 
instructed that all orders will be given them by their guide 
alone, and that no one else is to speak aloud while carry- 
ing a patient, or passing through the wards. All persons 
not having a specified duty to perform in receiN-ing pa- 
tients, should be put where they ^nll not be in the way or 
disturb the patients, but where they can be readily called 
on if the force engaged is found insufficient 

As each patient is brought on board, he will be exam- 
ined by the surgeon in charge, who will direct where he 
shall be taken ; at the same time notes will be taken, as 
follows : — 

Number^ Name^ Compafty, Regiment, Residence, Remarks. 

The administrative agent will, at the same time, cause 
a corresponding number to be placed on the effects of the 
patient, which he \s\\\ take care of, to be returned to the 
patient on his leaving the vessel. If practicable, the 
patients may, before being taken to their berths or cots, 
be washed and supplied ^^^th clean clothing. 

It \\-ill not usually be in the power of the surgeon in 
charge to select patients for his vessel. It may, however, 
be proper for him to protest against taking patients whose 
illness is not of a sufficiently serious character to warrant 
tlieir ^vithdrawal from the seat of war, or those for whose 
cases there is less suitable provision on the vessel than in 
the hospitals they are leaving, or those already in a d>ang 
condition, whose end \^'ill have been accelerated or whose 
suffering aggravated by their removal ; also, w^hen going 
to sea, against taking cases of compound fracture of the 
lower extremities. 

FRED. LAW OLMSTED, Geitl Sec'y. 

^^^lite House, Virginia, May 20, 1862. 



Appendix. 149 

SANITARY COMMISSION. 
Atlantic Hospital Transport Service, 

THE REGULATION OF DIET FOR PATIENTS. 

The simplest possible arrangements should be made for 
the diet of patients which ^^'ill be consistent with their 
proper treatment 

At the outset, the cook may be ordered to prepare daily 
for breakfast, to be ready at 7 A. M., ten gallons of 
tea and fifteen loaves of bread in slices, with butter, for 
every hundred patients on board ; for dinner, ten gallons 
of beef- stew made ^vith vegetables, and fifteen loaves of 
bread, for ever}^ hundred patients on board ; for tea, the 
same as for breakfast. 

Orders for special diet should, as far as possible, be 
confined to beef-tea, arrow-root or farina gruel, milk-por- 
ridge, and milk-punch. 

Quantities of each of these articles, except the punch, 
may be prepared by the cook once a day, and delivered 
to the matron, under whose care they should be warmed 
in portions over spirit-lamps, as required at any time dur- 
ing the day or night. 

As a general rule, for each hundred patients on board, 
there should be prepared, for twenty-four hours, — 

2\ gallons of beef-tea, 
4 gallons of gruel, 
\ gallon of milk-porridge. 

Where the patients are chiefly suffering from ilhiess, 
especially if from fevers, the above quantities will be 
found larger than is necessary. Where a large propoition 



150 Appendix. 



of them are severely wounded, they may need to be 
slightly increased. 

By estimating the quantity of each article which will be 
required for the twenty-four hours, as thus instructed, the 
surgeon in charge will find it best to give his orders to the 
cook for everj'thing at once, one day in advance. 

If the quantities ordered prove too small, the deficiency 
can be made good by the matron with crackers, tea, 
canned meats, or meat essence, &c., in the pantry ; it be- 
ing best, if possible, to avoid any call upon the cook or 
the ship's kitchen for this purpose. 

If the quantities prove too large for one day, the saN-ing 
can be used the next Whether too large or too small, a 
proper modification can be readily made in the order to 
the cook for the remainder of the trip. The surgeon in 
charge will in this way be relieved of the necessity of giv- 
ing further consideration to this department of administra- 
tion, which, if not thus simplified, will be found to be a 
source of much trouble and anxiety, greatly withdra\\ing 
his attention from surgical and medical duties proper. 
Associated surgeons should be careful to make no de- 
mands for diet, inconsistent with this arrangement 

Milk-punch is best made with cold w^ater in the pantr}\ 
This and all other cold drinks can be made under the 
superintendence of the matron, without any call upon 
the cook. The cook should, however, be required to 
keep a supply, as large as convenient, of hot water, 
constantly ready to meet any demand from a surgeon or 
the matron. 



APPENDIX C. 

See page 97. 

Copy of Letter to the Medical Director of the Army of the 
Potomac. 

\Vhite House, Va., June 3, 1862. 

My dear Sir: — There must be some frightful mis- 
understanding at the bottom of what is occurring here, in 
your department. It is ob\dous from the tenor of your 
telegraphic communications to me, that you are altogether 
wrongly informed about it. The Sanitary Commission, 
let me say at once, has not only obeyed every order, no 
matter how irregular or disrespectful the mode of its 
transmission, but has in good faith endeavored to carry 
out, at every point it could reach^ what was judged to be 
your i7itention^ supplying the absence or neglect of other 
agents on whom you appeared to depend, as it best could. 
Till night before last it made itself subordinate to the 
Surgeon-General of Pennsylvania, who assumed to act as 
your aid, and, under positive orders given by him in your 
name, it refrained from pursuing a plan pre\dously ap- 
proved by you, and by following which it is now obvious 
that a much greater and safer transport of the wounded 
would have occurred. From Sunday night to the present 
time, the Surgeon- General of Pennsylvania has not been 
seen here ; a thousand wounded men have, in the mean 



152 Appendix. 



time, arrived, and, as far as I am informed, not the slight- 
est provision of any kind has been made for them under 
order from you, or by any one whom you have regarded 
as under your orders, except the Sanitary Commission. 
After waiting some hours yesterday morning for the Sur- 
geon-General of Pennsylvania (who till then had been in 
charge of the railroad wharf) to act, finding men fainting 
in the sun ashore, I assumed the responsibility of taking 
eighty of them upon our little boat, and of having the 
remainder brought on the Da7iiel Webster No. 2. After 
doing so, I found one Dr. , very hard at work dress- 
ing wounded, &c. By advice of Captain Sawtelle and 
myself, he took pro\dsional medical charge, and I then 

telegraphed you, advising that Dr. or Dr. 

should be placed in general charge, with discretionary 
powers. 

We were doing what we could with men and women 
who could be spared from our boats, which were all full 
of wounded, to provide for those on the Webster and 
ashore. Before night, the Spaulding having arrived, I 
brought up fourteen fresh men and the ladies, with two 
physicians, and they have been steadily at work, and up 
to this time (noon of Tuesday) operating, dressing, feed- 
ing, and, with the assistance of other volunteers, bringing 
the wounded from the cars to the boat 

The Vanderbilt came more than a week ago, empty, and 
assigned to hospital service. She came to the wharf that 
had been built, at my request, for the use of the Sanitary 
Commission, refused to leave at my request, and has occu- 
pied it to our exclusion ever since. She has had surgeons 
and a large detail of soldiers on board, and I had been 
informed that she was reserved for the transportation of 
wounded, by your orders. Neither those on board of her 



Appendix. 153 

nor tliose at the camp hospital appeared at the railroad, 
or lent any assistance, to my knowledge, to the care of 
the wounded, until, under ad\^ce from Captain Sawtelle 

and myself, Dr. , who had received your telegram 

disacknowledging him as having any official position, re- 
quested the surgeon in charge to bring the Va7ide7'bilt to 
the railroad w^harf. Having our boats and the removal of 
the wounded in ambulance trains to attend to, I did not 
think it necessary to inquire if she were prepared for hos- 
pital duty, knoAving that she had been a week idle, and 
previously in hospital service ; but late this morning I was 
informed that she had not any commissar}^ or even neces- 
sary medical stores on board, and nothing whatever was 
being prepared for the sustenance of the patients. 

We have provided bread and molasses, for the want of 
anything else ready. We have been also called upon for, 
and are pro\iding, lint and bandages, &c., &c. 

The Elm City and K^iickerbocker are both off, the 
Spaulding is yet to discharge the commissary stores with 
w^hich she came loaded, and there is not a boat here now 
which can carry wounded, nor is there a tent pitched for 
them. 

I have no time to be more full and exact. I have called 
on Colonel Ingalls to establish a cooking arrangement on 
shore, and shall try to get beef for soup. 

I hear that more wounded are arriving. God knows 
v/hat will be done with them. 

As the telegraph refuses to send any messages to you 
to-day, being fully occupied with the General's business, 
I shall, if possible, send this to you this evening by a 
special messenger. 

I am very faithfully, &:c. 



154 Appendix, 



Copy of a Letter to the Surgeon- General. 

Steamboat Wilson Small, 
Oflf White House, Va., June 17, 1862. 

(A.) My dear General: — Your prompt action, of 
which I am notified by your telegram of this date, in 
securing the shipment of large supplies of anti-scorbutics 
to the Army of the Potomac, without waiting for the 
Medical Director to assume the responsibility of ordering 
them, leads me to hope that you may think it right in 
like manner to interpose for the protection of the army 
from other evils, for which the remedies are equally obvi- 
ous, and more readily attainable. 

I therefore urge that tarpaulings, old sails, felt, or can- 
vas in bolts, with means of putting it together, be sent 
here immediately, in quantities sufficient to form a shelter 
for ten thousand wounded men. The materials for extend- 
ing and supporting it in the form of sheds can be found 
in the woods immediately in the rear of the line of opera- 
tions, where the shelters should be placed. I should pro- 
pose that at least one depot for wounded should in this 
way be prepared for each army corps. Water should be 
secured in its vicinit}^, and means for providing large 
quantities of beef- tea or soup. 

I know that such an arrangement would have saved 
many hundred lives after the battle of Fair Oaks. Nearly 
all of those with whom I conversed, of the first three 
thousand wounded men who received aid at this point 
from the Sanitaiy Commission, assured me that they 
had been without shelter from sun or rain, and with- 
out nourishment, from the time they fell until they came 
into our hands. This would be a period of from one to 



Appendix. 155 

four days. The men seemed sincere, and their appear- 
ance was such as to lead me to the conclusion that, in 
many cases, at least, they asserted no more than the 
trath. 

If, without waiting for a demand from the ^Medical Di- 
rector, or the convenience of the Quartermaster's staff of 
this army, it would be in your power to order it, it seems 
to me that a provision of the kind I have indicated 
should be made \vithin a single week. Everything neces- 
sary should be sent here ; canvas, nails, tools, laborers, 
kettles, beef, pans, spoons, cooks. The smallest service 
for hospital purposes cannot be procured here now by the 
most energetic and persistent surgeons in less than a 
fortnight from the time they undertake to secure it. I 
have called three times a day, for ten days, for a detail of 
ten men to police the landing-place of the hospital boats ; 
and though constantly promised me, and though the need 
for the work is acknowledged to be very great, I do not 
yet succeed in getting them. 



Memoi-andtun of Arraiigevients p7'oposed by the Secretary 
of the Comviissioii, to prevent a 7'eciirrence of the confu- 
sion hi the Transport Service which occicrrcd after the 
Battle of Fair Oaks. 

The follo^^g is a list of Transports understood to be 
at present available for hospital service for the Army of 
the Potomac : — 

Sea Stea7ners^ fitted for long passages outside, 
S. R. Spaulding. Daniel Webster No. I. 



156 Appendix. 

Coast- Steamer's ^ which must make a ha^'bor on the ap- 
proach of bad weather^ and which should not be sent be- 
yond Philadelphia^ U7tless the necessity is urgent. 
Elm City, Commodore, 

State of Maine, Kennebeck, 

John Brooks, Daniel Webster No. 2. 

Coast-Steamers which should not be run outside, 

Vanderbilt, Louisiana, 

Whilldin, Knickerbocker. 

Sailing vessels adapted to be used as Statio7tary Hospitals^ 
or to be towed outside. 
St. Mark. Euterpe. 

The aggregate capacity of these vessels is equal to the 
accommodation of four thousand (4,000) patients, and may 
be increased to five thousand (5,000) if the necessity is 
urgent. 

From the time a, boat leaves, until she can be prepared 
to leave again, — 

will be, if she runs to New York, 7 days, 
*' '' " to Philadelphia, 6 days, 
" '' *' to Washington, 4 days, 
" " " to Annapolis, 4 days, 
" " ** to Baltimore, 4 days, 
'' " " to Old Point, 2 days. 

If, in the event of a general engagement, all the 
wounded sent from White House are taken to the near- 
est hospitals, until these are full, there will be occupation 
for but few of the boats ; four of them, for instance, 
would take seven hundred (700) a day to Fortress JNIonroe 
continuously. Having filled the nearer hospitals, how- 



Appendix. 157 

ever, all the vessels would be insufficient to sustain a con- 
tinuous movement to those more distant. jNIoreover, 
most of the transports are unfit to convey patients to the 
most distant hospitals. It is, therefore, necessary that the 
business should be so arranged that transports may, from 
the beginning, run both to the nearer and the more distant 
hospitals, and that the limited number of sea-going ves- 
sels should be run only to the distant seaports. 

To accomplish this, I suggest that the different trans- 
ports be formed into lines ^ as follows : — 

1. For Virgijtia hospitals. 

(Fortress Monroe, Ne^vport's News, Portsmouth, and 
Point Lookout.) 

2. For Maryland hospitals. 

(Washington, Alexandria, Annapolis, and Baltimore.) 

3. For Pennsylvania hospitals. 

4. For New York hospitals. 

As two of the sea-going vessels cannot come up to 
^Yhite House, and these, to be used effectively, must be 
towed by the other two, the New York line would be 
best employed in preventing too great an accumulation at 
Fortress Monroe, — running only from Fortress Monroe 
to New York. 

If it be assumed that seven hundred (700) ^^^ill arrive 
daily at \Yhite House, they may be disposed of according 
to the accompanying schedule ^vith regularit}^ and "with no 
necessity for crowding. 



158 



Appendix. 



Plan for the Disposition of Patients to be seitt i7t HoSj^ 
Transports fi'om White House. 



^'^y^- |,i:; 


Men. 


Md. 


Va. 


Penn. 


N. Y. 




I St day j Va. 


300 




300 








" ♦' I Md. 


400 


400 








I St day, 700 


2d " 


Penn. 


400 












" " 


Va. 


300 




600 




600 


2d '' 1,400 


3.? ;: 


Md. 


400 


800 












Va. 


300 




300 






3d " 2,100 


4th " 


Md. 


400 


1,200 










U il 


Va. 


300 




135 






4th " 2,800 


5th ;; 


Md. 


400 


1,600 












Va. 


300 




435 






5th " 3,500 


6th " 


Md. 


400 


2,000 










" " 


Va. 


300 




735 




1,665 


6th " 4,200 


7th ;; 


Va. 
Penn. 


300 
400 




1.035 






7th " 4,900 


8th " 


Va. 


300 




735 








" " 


Md. 


4CK) 


2,400 




800 




8th " 5,600 


gth ;; 


Va. 


300 




1.035 










Md. 


400 


2,800 








9th " 6,300 


loth " 


Va. 


300 




1.335 








U <£ 


Md. 


400 


3,200 








loth " 7,000 


iith " 


Va. 


300 




1,170 




2,130 




" " 


Md. 


400 


3,600 








nth " 7,700 


i2th " 


Va. 


300 




1,470 








" " 


Md. 


400 


4,000 








i2th " 8,400 


13th " 


Va. 


300 




1,770 








" " 


Md. 


400 


4,400 








13th " 9,100 


14th ;; 


Penn. 


400 






1,200 








Va. 


300 




2,070 






14th " 9,800 


15th " 


Md. 


400 


4,800 










" " 


Va. 


300 




2,370 






15th " 10,500 


i6th " 


Md. 


400 


5,200 






2,730 




" " 


Va. 


300 




2,070 






i6th " 11,200 


T 


otal, 


11,200 


5,300 


2,070 


1,200 


2,^2*^ ' 11.200 1 



To carry out the foregoing plan, the Ke7i7tebeck and 
Daitiel Webster No. 2 should be run exclusively to the 
Virginia hospitals, — one daily, each carrying three hun- 
dred (300) patients at a trip. 

The Commodore^ Vanderbilt, State of Maine ^ and Lou- 
isiafia should be run exclusively to the Maryland hospitals, 



Appendix. 159 

each carrying four hundred (400) patients at a trip, one 
daily, the round trip being four days. 

The Ehn City, being the best of the coast boats for out- 
side work, would run to the nearest outside post, Phila- 
delphia, once every six days, conveying four hundred 
{400) at each trip. 

The J-ohii Brooks, the Whilldm, and the Knickerbocker 
would be surgical receiving hospitals, or resen^e boats, to 
take the place of any detained by grounding or other 
accident. 

The vessels of the New York line can be diverted to 
Philadelphia as often as it is thought desirable. 

After the wounded have ceased coming to White 
House, the vessels of the Xew York line can be run to 
other more Northern and Eastern ports, until the nearer 
hospitals are emptied. 

The above presumes that cases of light wounds and of 
extremely severe wounds will not be allowed to come to 
White House at all. 

Respectfully, 
(Signed,) Fred. Law Olmsted, 

Gefi^l Sec''y San, Com, 



APPENDIX D. 

See page 130. 

Shortly after the battle of Fair Oaks, the new and 
vastly more provident, liberal, and \\'isely economical 
policy introduced into the medical sersdce, ^vith the ap- 
pointment of Dr. Hammond as Surgeon-General, and of 
the new corps of ]Medical Inspectors, began to be felt in 
the army of the Potomac, — and although many of the 
agents necessary to the perfect success of that policy were 
unable at once to accommodate their habits to the re- 
quired change, the Commission, scrupulously adhering to 
its purpose to do nothing which the properly responsible 
officials in any department evinced any readiness to do 
without its assistance, had the satisfaction of seeing the 
necessity for its special service, in connection with the 
hospital transports, gi*ow gradually smaller and smaller. 
Under the dry, taciturn, and impenetrable manner, prom- 
ising nothing, of the new Medical Director of the Army of 
the Potomac, who, just after the battle of the Seven Days, 
relieved a predecessor of precisely the opposite qualities, 
was found to be concealed some influence by means of 
which whatever had before been impossible began to be 
thought possible, and to be tried for, after a few judicious 
dismissals had been made ; and, after a few visits of influ- 
ential friends to Governors and Senators in behalf of the 
dismissed had resulted in nothing but an incomprehensible 



Appe7idix. 1 6 1 



failure of their piu*pose, the Commission's occupation was 
more than half gone ^^dth that army. But where so many 
agents are to be depended on. and such sudden new dispo- 
sitions and reorganizations must be made, as after those 
terrible seven days, it is impossible that any demand of a 
large army should always be promptly and fully met. 
Anxiet}^ for the well, that they might be saved from 
disease, soon outT\-eighed anxiety lest the sick should not 
be tenderly cared for, and in more than one direction an 
opportunit}- was found to supply temporan," deficiencies, 
which othen^'ise would have told severely upon the health 
of many thousand men. During the month after the 
army reached and intrenched itself on the James River, 
the vessels managed by the Commission probably did a 
better ser\ice in what they brought to the army, than in 
the comfort they secured to the sick who were sent away 
upon them. The following extracts will sen^e to give the 
reader a more complete understanding of its ruling spirit 
and purpose, and show its continued action to the time of 
the withdrawal of the army of the Potomac from the 
Peninsula. 

(A.) Xorfolk^ ytine 30, 1 862. — ^Ye were driven 
from WTiite House Friday P. ^I. ; anived at Old Point 
yesterday. Being unable to get coal there, came here 
this evening. Shall coal to-night and leave at daybreak 
for Harrison's Bar, on James River, where the gunboats 
are said to be. We hope to get further up, but are ad- 
\T.5ed by General Dix that we cannot safely attempt it at 
present 

(A.) Off Berkeley, James River, July I, 1862. — 
We felt our way up the river slowly, and with some 
II 



1 62 Appe7idix. 

difficulty, having no pilot, and seeing no vessel under 
way after passing out of sight of Newport's News until 
we reached this point Here there was a gunboat and 
three small steam-transports, each of which afterwards 
left, so that for a short time we were alone. Transports 
soon began to come up, however, and to-night there are a 
dozen or more about us. 

We have Colonel , Colonel , and a few other 

wounded officers on board. They were sent to us by 
General McClellan's own ambulance, half an hour after 
we arrived. The General had been here, and left only as 
we were coming to the wharf. The officers he saw here 
converse with us freely, and we have had officers on board 
from most of tlie army corps, who have also talked, appar- 
ently without reserve, with us. Yet reports and opinions 
are so contradictory, that we are in singular uncertainty as 
to what has happened and as to what we have to expect. 

The officers and soldiers all show the influence of in- 
tense excitement ; they acknowledge the gravest anxiety ; 
they are terribly fatigued, yet generally seem in good 
spirits. They speak much of the bravery of the men. 

(A.) Chesapeake Bay, Jiily d^, 1862. — I left our an- 
chorage off Head-quarters of the Army of the Potomac, 
where I wrote you last, about four o'clock yesterday 
afternoon, and am running to Washington, by request 
of the Medical Director, to advise the Surgeon- General 
of the sanitary condition of the army, and to secure the 
immediate supply, as far as possible, of its most urgent 
surgical and medical wants. As the rebels have put out 
the lights, and we could get no pilot, we were all night 
feeling our way down the river, and shall not be able, 
with all we can do, to get to Washington till late to-night. 



Appendix. 163 

I hope to get what is most necessar}^, and leave on our 
return before night to-morrow. I telegraphed from Old 
Point to have everything advanced. 

I have seen and conversed freely ^vith many staff offi- 
cers, and been among the men, wounded and well — if 
any can be called well, where all are feverish mth seven 
days and nights of fatigue and exhaustion and starvation 
and excitement. One, a Major- General, said, " I have 
not been asleep, nor have I tasted food, in five days. I 
have only sustained myself with coffee and cigars. " As to 
the men, the follomng is a fair sample of statements com- 
monly made: *'My regiment has had, for the last five 
days before arriving here, two days' rations ; what has 
been eaten of this has been uncooked ; during that time 
it has made five hard marches, and fought five battles ; 
one third of it has fallen in killed or wounded, and not 
one man has been shot in the back. One third of what 
remains is now on picket duty in the woods, which the 
enemy is shelling; the other lies yonder, in the mud, 
sleeping on its arms." This was during the rain, which 
fell in such torrents day before yesterday. Yesterday the 
enemy was attacking again, and the whole army in the line 
of battle up to the time we left 

The exultant confidence of the army in itself is beyond 
all verbal expression. It has gro^vn out of the experience 
of its ability to resist and foil and terribly punish des- 
perate assaults made upon it, as is supposed with forces 
greatly superior in number. It says, proudly, "All that 
men can do, we can do." But there is also the conscious- 
ness of a terrible strain upon its energies, of an unnatural 
strength, and the reflection is frequent that there must be 
a limit to every man's endurance. 

Rest and recuperation, — how are they to be had ? The 



164 Appendix. 

first only by the relief of reinforcements ; the second only 
by good diet and favorable hygienic circumstances. East- 
em Virginia is all malarious, — the banks of James River 
notoriously so ; the army is chiefly upon a moderately 
elevated, slightly undulating table-land ; the river on the 
south side ; swampy ground at no great distance on the 
other sides. It is open, airy, dry, — a healthful point, 
upon the whole, as any that could be selected east of 
Richmond. But the sun will lie exceedingly fierce upon 
it, and it is supposed the army has lost two tliirds of its 
tents. Probably a majority of the men have lost also 
their knapsacks and blankets. Many were without caps 
or shoes. The area held is small, and will be crowded. 
If the enemy is active, as it would appear his policy to be, 
the officers \\'ill be too much occupied \^dth the immediate 
military necessities of the position to give much attention 
to police duties. Even if they should be well disposed, 
the excessively fatigued and exhausted condition of the 
men, and the necessity of reser\dng their strength from 
day to day for the straggle mth the enemy, "s\ill forbid 
the constant labor which would be necessaiy to prevent a 
terrible accumulation of nuisances, until at least reinforce- 
ments shall arrive so large that no more than the ordinary 
quotas will be required for guard and picket duty. After 
such tension and trial, a rapid reduction of force must also 
occur from sickness, and those not on the sick-list \vill 
suffer from the lassitude of reaction from excitement. 
Under these circumstances, all our experience shows that 
it ^^411 be hardly possible to enforce requirements, the ob- 
servance of which must be essential to a healthy camp. 

Unless large reinforcements speedily anive, then, not 
only must the army feel that its heroism is unappreciated, 
and the object for which it struggled is to be lost by the 



Appendix. 165 

neglect of others, and thus become dejected, dispirited, 
and morally resistless to the dangers of disease ; but it wall 
be physically impossible to establish such guards against 
these dangers as are most ob^dously and directly called for. 
There is, in general, a large degree of confidence that, 
with the aid of the gunboats, which are throw^g shell on 
the flanks at frequent intervals, we can hold the position 
till sufficient reinforcements come to place it beyond ques- 
tion ; but no one speaks with entire confidence, and the 
nearer to the head the graver seems the apprehension, — 
though with all there is that strange exultation — ready to 
break out in laughter, like a crazy man's. There are 
some few who are utterly despondent and fault-finding. 
But there is less of this than ever before, and fewer strag- 
glers and obvious cowards, — nothing like what was seen 
after Pittsburg Landing. Of what we saw after Bull Run 
there is not the slightest symptom. In short, we have 
then a real grand army, tried, enduring, heroic, — worth 
all we can give to save it. 

(C.) On Saturday we commenced the distribution of 
the cargo, and it has been going steadily on since in a 
very gratifying manner, every one concerned throwing off 
his coat, and working with a ^vill, these intensely hot 
days, — surgeons, quartermasters, and other officers, 
always giving us eveiy possible assistance in their eager- 
ness to get this agreeable addition to their fare into the 
camp-kettles as soon as possible. The salted fish was a 
grand hit It seems to have a peculiar attraction for 
languid appetites this hot weather. We have met, thus 
far, with but one man inclined to throw any obstruction 
in the way of the distribution, — a brigade commis- 
sary, who seemed to think any imusual indulgence of a 



1 66 Appendix. 

soldier's whims of appetite must be demoralizing. Word 
of our intention had gone through the brigade, however, 
before he interfered, and the eagerness of the surgeons 
and of the soldiers took him very quickly out of the way 
vidthout any efforts on our part. Regimental transporta- 
tion was quickly at the wharf, with the thanks and com- 
pliments of the colonels, and each received its quota. 

The promptness with which the cargo — 

nearly a thousand barrels — would have been discharged, 
will be somewhat affected by the inability of some of the 
regiments of Heintzelman's corps to send transportation, 
on account of a movement for which they are ordered to 

stand in readiness to-day The sudden orders 

given yesterday for the immediate transportation of 
several thousand sick, have caused an influx of sick to 
the landing, overrunning all that the exertions of the 

Medical Director could do to pro\dde for them ; 

This morning we found five hundred and sixty convales- 
cents on board the transport Cahawba, with, to use the^ 

language of the , ' ' not a bit of a thing aboard for 

'em to chaw upon." As the poor fellows, many of them 
just getting up from fever, had been, in most cases, finding 
their way from the camps to the landing on foot, durinig 
the night, their want was urgent. Fortunately, we had 
a good supply of the concentrated beef of Martinez's 
preparation, and were not long in getting ready an excel- 
lent breakfast for them. It is in just such cases as this, 
where misery is massed, and where what is done tells not 
only for the relief of misery, but for the strength of the 
army and the putting down of the rebellion, that we find 
the greatest satisfaction in stepping in with the gifts of the 
people. Many of these men were in just the condition in 
which a set-back would be likely to lead to a relapse and 



Appendix, 167 

lingering illness, and in which again, if they were well 
cared for, they might be built up rapidly, and soon be 
gent back to their muskets. 

On account of the movements to-day, I shall ride out 
to the camps this afternoon, and make some change of 
arrangements for the further distribution of the anti-scor- 
butics. The gunboats were playing very lively at sunrise, 
a little way down the river. This is as much as I should 
say to-day, but you will hear of something that you hardly 
expect by the next mail-boat. 




Cambridge : Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 



